The young mother in Norman Rockwell’s famous portrayal sits bolt upright on a chair, hairbrush in her right hand, which also grasps the shirt of the little boy splayed across her lap, tummy down, waiting for his expected spanking. In her left hand, however, the mother is holding a book, Child Psychology, with an expression on her face that combines consternation with anger (Rockwell, Reference Rockwell1933). She has plenty of reason to think her son deserves a punishment, as the broken objects strewn on the floor show – a vase, a tennis racquet, and a clock, along with a hammer. Yet she hesitates to carry out the punishment that is most familiar to her for such a transgression. “Child psychology,” a new kind of way to think about children’s behavior, has just begun to take hold in this young mother’s world. And the book in her hand is probably telling her that the old forms of discipline need to be replaced with new, more “scientific” guidance. Clearly, this mother wants to do the right thing. But what actually is the right thing?

Ideas about how to be a good mother – or good father – have varied across historical time as well as across cultures, but they consistently play a major role in parents’ own sense of well-being and thus emotion regulation. Norman Rockwell’s picture was first published on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1933, just 5 years after John B. Watson’s slim but extraordinarily influential book Psychological Care of Infant and Child, in which he prescribed a business-like approach to child-rearing and pressed his case for reward-and-punishment behaviorism (Watson, Reference Watson1928). In contrast to Watson’s views, however, other influential professionals such as Arnold Gesell (Gesell & Ilg, Reference Gesell and Ilg1943), saw child development as a natural, maturational process. According to family historian Ann Hulbert, the dueling opposites set up at that time have endured to the present (Hulbert, Reference Hulbert2004). In short, for present-day US parents, the question of how to be a good parent has yet to be answered satisfactorily.

10.1 Mothers as Cross-Cultural Pioneers: The Experiences of Expatriate Journalists

In recent years, however, American parents – as well as parents in other postindustrial societies – have begun to look beyond local sources of advice to what can be learned from other cultures, both within and beyond the middle-class Western world. Among the pioneers in this quest are mothers living in cultural places different from where they grew up, who have produced books written as participant observers of what they see as better ways to be a good parent.

Perhaps the most widely read example of this new genre is Pamela Druckerman’s account of French parenting (Druckerman, Reference Druckerman2014). In her book French Children Don’t Throw Food, first published in Great Britain and later republished in the United States under the title Bringing up Bebé, Druckerman describes her experiences as a new mother living in Paris, where (as noted in the book’s subtitle) she “discovers the wisdom of French parenting.” Druckerman presents herself as a confused American new mother, desperate for guidance but shocked by the parenting practices she observes when she goes home to visit. Her new discoveries include a range of topics, from establishing regular schedules of eating and sleeping in the opening months of the baby’s life, to teaching the baby to “wait” for a response from adults, to advantages of the infant crèche for full-day care whether the mother is employed or not. Two themes appear repeatedly in her French experience: one, that the task of parents and other caregivers is to “awaken” babies’ senses and encourage them to “discover” the world around them; the other, that babies need to understand from the beginning that they are not the center of the universe, their parents also have needs, and they must learn to be patient, entertain themselves, and not expect frequent expressions of praise. Notably absent are concerns about stimulating children’s school-related skills; for example, the infant crèche has no apparent curriculum, though they do serve the children four-course lunches (purėed or cut in small pieces depending on the age of the child).

Two other books – one about Danish parenting and the other about Dutch parents, both written by expatriate American or British mothers married to local citizens – offer further perspectives on how to raise children successfully with a lot less stress than they attribute to their home countries. The premise of both books is that residents of their respective countries have received top ratings from international organizations as being the “happiest” in the world, thus they must have something helpful to offer the rest of us. The main idea, or “parenting theory,” put forth by American author Jessica Alexander and her Danish coauthor Iben Sandahl in The Danish Way of Parenting (2016, p. 21) is straightforward: “Happy kids grow up to be happy adults who raise happy kids, and so on.” Invoking our work on “parental ethnotheories“ (Harkness & Super, Reference Harkness, Super, Harkness and Super1996), they urge readers to pay attention to their own “default settings,” that is, the implicit, taken-for-granted ideas that guide the way they raise their children. The “Danish way of parenting” is contrasted to what they describe as the “epidemic of stress” in the United States, where parents compete with each other to raise the highest-achieving children but where prescription drugs – Ritalin for children, antidepressants for both adults and increasingly young sufferers – are used at much higher rates than in Europe. In Denmark, on the other hand, they describe an approach to parenting that emphasizes letting children learn on their own as much as possible, through play rather than direct instruction. Humility is valued, and praise for children’s accomplishments is given out sparingly. Paradoxically, they note, Danish movies often have sad endings (unlike typical American movies) – but they see this as an aspect of “authenticity,” another key feature of Danish parenting that should produce children who can recognize and accept their own emotions – and relatedly (as they see it), know their own limits. Last but not least, they describe the importance of “cozy” (hygge) family times that help everyone feel connected, an idea that they contrast to American “individualism.”

Although Danish people have been ranked at the apex of happiness (according to a worldwide survey by the United Nations), Dutch children come out at the top in a UNICEF report (2012). These rankings may be taken with a grain of salt because they seem to vary a bit from one survey to the next (Norway edged out Denmark as the “happiest” country in 2017). Another caveat relates to the definition of “happiness” in such surveys, which includes measures of economic well-being, health, and educational achievement in addition to simply asking people how happy they feel. Not surprisingly, given their strong social benefit programs and low poverty rates, the northern European countries hover around the top of the scales.

But is there more to actual “happiness” in Denmark and the Netherlands than just rankings of overall socioeconomic well-being? In The Happiest Kids in the World, American writer Rina Mae Acosta and her English colleague Michele Hutchison set out to explain just why Dutch children are given such high grades for happiness (Acosta & Hutchinson, Reference Acosta and Hutchinson2017). Both authors are expatriates in the Netherlands, married to Dutch men and bringing up their children in a foreign environment that they find increasingly homelike. Some of the themes they invoke are familiar. In contrast to superstimulated American and British children, Dutch children have more time to play without an imposed educational agenda. Parenthood is not a competition about whose child achieves the most. In fact, a teacher urges one of the authors not to help her young son prepare for an important test, as it might create a “strain” on him. There’s more time for families to enjoy being together. The term gezellig (which the authors compare to the Danish hygge) captures the cozy, comfortable sociability that is the essence of a good life. In addition to these similarities, though, Acosta and Hutchison also discover a uniquely Dutch mainstay of parenting: the emphasis on rest and a regular schedule as key to children’s healthy development and – yes – happiness.

10.2 Academic Research on Parenting

Academic research on parenting across cultures is generally consistent with the more journalistic accounts by expatriate mothers (it should be acknowledged that they too relied on scholarly sources). In our own research with Dutch families in the 1990s, for example, we found that Dutch mothers tended to rate their days more favorably than did mothers in six other Western cultures, especially in relation to their child’s sleeping patterns, the time and energy they had available for their child, and the balance of parenting with other tasks. The importance of the Dutch Three R’s – rest (Rust), regularity (Regelmaat), and cleanliness (Reinheid) – became obvious in our interviews with parents and observations of infant behavior: compared to same-aged US children, the Dutch babies in our study were sleeping two hours more per 24-hour day at 6 months of age. This difference continued to our oldest measurement point when the children were 7 or 8 years old, although it diminished over time (Super et al., Reference Super, Harkness, van Tijen, van der Vlugt, Dykstra, Fintelman, Harkness and Super1996). A detailed analysis of how Dutch and US mothers of 2- and 6-month-old infants talked about regularity revealed a fundamental difference in ideas about “getting the baby on a schedule”: whereas the US mothers “hoped” that their baby would settle into a regular schedule for the sake of the whole family, the Dutch mothers were confident that regularity in sleep, eating, and other activities was essential for the baby’s healthy development. In addition, the Dutch mothers evidently felt more entitled to take their own needs and the needs of the rest of the family into consideration than did the US mothers, who seemed convinced that being a “good mother” necessarily entailed prioritizing the baby’s perceived needs almost to the exclusion of their own (van Schaik et al., Reference van Schaik, Mavridis, De Looze, Blom, Super and Harkness2020).

The emphasis on the importance of a regular schedule carried through to these Dutch mothers’ talk about their children’s daily routines at older ages. The mother of 7-year-old Willem described her son’s typical weekday, in the process incorporating her own day:

Weekends are different, according to Willem’s father, although Willem still gets up at the same time. “We lie in bed longer, if possible. Then when he’s tired of watching TV, he often comes upstairs to see if we’re still in bed, and sometimes he climbs in with us.” The father continues, “So we get up at around 9:30, have coffee and bread (orange juice for him). Then, if I don’t have to work, the three of us go grocery shopping in town.”

In the accounts of both Willem’s mother and father, the theme of regularity is expressed through frequent references to the times of day when certain activities take place, with eating and sleeping schedules, plus school, as guideposts for variability in other activities. Being a good parent, in this context, includes providing emotional security through a regular schedule that the child can rely on. As the father of a 5-year-old girl said, “Regularity is the most important … so much happens in her little world. It’s important that promised things are as promised, and that means some regularity. Go to bed on time, eat on time.” The mother agrees, “Yes, regularity and rest, I think.”

10.3 Parents’ Ideas in Action: The Power of Parental Ethnotheories

As the stories of family life that we heard from Dutch parents illustrate, parenting practices in various cultural places are shaped by shared ideas about parenting. Parents’ ideas exist at many levels, from the most general and abstract to the specific and concrete. They also vary in how available they are for identification and explanation by the parents who hold them. The Three Rs of Dutch parenting are an example of a well-known, historically grounded principle of child-rearing (Super et al., Reference Super, Blom, Harkness, Ranade and Londhe2021); parents in our research were able to explain them to us as well as illustrate them with actual stories about daily life for their children and themselves. In anthropological terms, such constellations of beliefs are often referred to as “cultural models” that have strong motivational properties. They are not just mental representations of the way that things are but also of the way things should be (D’Andrade & Strauss, Reference D’Andrade and Strauss1992). We refer to such cultural models, when related specifically to parenting, as “parental ethnotheories“ (Harkness & Super, Reference Harkness, Super, Harkness and Super1996).

Parental ethnotheories can be thought of as a cascade of ideas, constraints, practices, and outcomes (Harkness & Super, Reference Harkness, Super, Rubin and Chung2006, figure 1, p. 71). The cultural models at the top of the model are the most general, often implicit ideas about the nature of the child, parenting, and the family. Below this triad are ideas about specific domains, such as infant sleep or social development. These ideas are closely tied to ideas about appropriate practices (such as strict bedtimes), and further to imagined child or family outcomes. The ideas are translated into behavior but only as mediated by factors such as the child’s temperament characteristics, parents’ schedules, and competing cultural models and their related practices. The results can be seen in actual parental behaviors and ultimately in actual child and family outcomes. In the example of the Three Rs of Dutch child-rearing, the triad of rest, regularity, and cleanliness appears to be an implicit template for much of family – indeed, societal – life, and it flows easily into the second level, regarding specific beliefs, in this case about the importance of rest etc. The daily routines that these families described were instantiations of the Three Rs, and they were often accompanied by comments about their benefits. During our time living with and learning from these Dutch families, we were struck by the implicit emphasis on emotional regulation inherent in the Three Rs. For example, a typical comment from a parent in support of a regular and restful routine was, “If he doesn’t get enough sleep, he’s fussy the next day.” Likewise, parents alluded to their own need for adequate rest and some time for themselves after the children were in bed. For these families, it appeared, keeping daily practices consistent with the principles of the Three Rs did not seem to be a problem; but as any parent knows, one cannot assume that practices will always reflect principles. Thus the parental ethnotheories model includes space for things that interfere with parents’ ideas about being a good parent.

The parental ethnotheories model ties together culturally shared ideas, practices, and outcomes. Thus, learning about one part of the model can lead the observer to explore how it functions in relation to other parts, as well as how it may vary across cultures. For example, learning about the Three Rs from Dutch parents aroused our curiosity about what parents in other cultures – even within Western Europe – might think about the importance of a regular and restful schedule for children. When we asked an Italian mother what she thought about feeding her baby on a regular schedule, her response was emphatic:

In contrast to the Dutch mothers, the majority of mothers in our Italian sample did not expect their babies to self-regulate their state of rest and arousal; rather, they tended to accommodate to the infant’s inborn sleeping and feeding schedules without imposing any rules, because “babies learn to regulate themselves.” This idea in turn related to a more implicit principle that our Italian colleague, Vanna Axia, explained to us, that is the importance of emotional closeness, especially within the family. As with the Three Rs for the Dutch parents, the cultural model of emotional closeness for the Italian families could be related to various aspects of family life. For example, when we asked the Italian parents about whether children should have a regular bedtime, the general response was “yes … ” but then with numerous exceptions. The mother of one 4-year-old girl stated firmly that “the rule is going to bed in the evening not after 9:00 – unless there are friends, parties, or we are out – then the rules are broken.” In this cultural scenario, emotion regulation for both children and their parents was a joint project, supported by a close and loving relationship.

10.4 The Importance of Context: Parenting across the Globe

The Dutch and Italian parents whom we met through our research lived in somewhat similar circumstances. Thus, the differences we observed in parenting might be seen as dictated more by cultural traditions than by what John Whiting (Reference Whiting, Leiderman, Tulkin and Rosenfeld1977) called “maintenance systems,” including economic structure, government, and the overall organization of society. A quick hop across the globe and across time to Kokwet, the rural African community where we carried out research with children and families in the 1970s, provides a contrasting example (Harkness & Super, Reference Harkness, Super, Lewis and Saarni1985; Super & Harkness, Reference Super and Harkness1986). Our images from those times include a photograph of Mrs Mitei (as our local research assistant always referred to her) seated on the ground outside her mud-and-wattle hut with the youngest three of her eight children as they work together peeling maize kernels off the dried cob. The photo catches her in an affectionate interchange with the toddler seated next to her, who is too young to participate but content to stay with his siblings and his mother. The maize kernels will be ground for making kimiet, a thick porridge that is the staple food in this community. Mrs Mitei’s day includes cooking kimiet, garnished with wild leafy vegetables that grow between the rows of maize on their plot of land. Kipsigis tea – a hearty beverage of milk and tea leaves boiled together and sweetened with a generous spoonful of sugar from the local store – accompanies every meal. Mrs Mitei and her children eat together, seated on the ground, while her husband, Arap (or “Mr” in our parlance) Mitei, eats off to the side, following Kipsigis etiquette. Mrs Mitei also goes down to the river to bring back a bucket of water, balanced on her head, for cooking and washing, and she spends several hours in her fields weeding, along with several neighborhood women who take turns helping in each other’s gardens, while older siblings take care of the younger ones at the edge of the field. At night, Mrs Mitei will sleep on the sculpted mud floor of her own hut, with her youngest child at her front and next-youngest at her back; the older children sleep in a separate hut across the compound, and Arap Mitei has his own. When the children are not with their mother, they are mostly busy helping out, for example, 4-year-old Kipkoech, captured in another photo, is posted by maize kernels spread out to dry on cow hides, where he drives away an errant calf from this tempting snack.

10.5 Cultural Typologies of Mothers

What Mrs Mitei does as a “good mother” is quite different from the European mothers mentioned previously, even though their fundamental goals of raising healthy and productive children are no doubt the same. Mrs Mitei and mothers like her are described by anthropologist Beatrice Whiting as “training mothers,” whose communications with their children often revolve around assigning tasks that contribute to the whole family’s sustenance (unlike picking up one’s toys or even setting the table for dinner). Based on observations of mothers’ behavior with their children in 12 cultural places, Whiting and her colleague Carolyn Pope Edwards proposed three maternal profiles (Whiting & Edwards, Reference Whiting and Edwards1988). The “training mother” profile was found in all their sub-Saharan research samples. In contrast to this profile was the “controlling mother,” whose interactions seemed more oriented to managing the child’s behavior. This profile was most prevalent in agricultural communities of the Philippines, Mexico, and north India, where – as Whiting theorized – children were not needed as much for household or farm work. The last profile, the “sociable mother,” was found only in the American community of “Orchard Town,” a western suburb of Boston. In fact, these mothers also used primarily “controlling” speech with their children; but unlike the other cultural places, sociable interactions were second most frequent in this place. Whiting and Edwards suggested that this maternal style was due in part to the social isolation of these mothers: in contrast to all the other cultural samples, the mothers of Orchard Town often had no one to talk with except their children.

To this triad of mothers’ parenting styles, we might add another, the “educating mother” or father. This approach to parenting has long been recognized as important in East Asian cultures, and it has become increasingly prevalent among middle-class families in post-industrial Western societies, especially the United States (Harkness et al., Reference Harkness, Super, Moscardino, Rha, Blom, Huitrón, Johnston, Sutherland, Hyun, Axia and Palacios2007). A Korean mother interviewed about her 2-month-old infant expressed the Asian version of this theme: “My baby looks at new things very intensively for a long time. I think he recognizes things and he is thinking. I like it. It is his brain development. I would like to show him lots of things to help and encourage his brain development …. I put some pictures on the wall to show him things” (ibid., p. 30). Another Korean mother recounted, “I play music to her or I play tapes of stories so she could listen to them. The stories are recorded in Korean and in English. The earlier she starts the better” (Harkness, Super, and Mavridis, Reference Harkness, Super, Mavridis, Chen and Rubin2011, p. 84).

The “educating mother” is well represented in studies of Asian parenting through adolescence and even into college. For example, Korean mothers of preschool children reported spending most of their time in educational activities with their children, even though in principle they claimed that raising children to have good socioemotional qualities was their highest priority. Many of these mothers expressed anxiety about the conflict between their beliefs and practices but explained that it was necessary to help their children meet academic expectations for children entering kindergarten (Park & Kwon, Reference Park and Kwon2009). A further explanation for Asian mothers’ focus on their children’s academic achievement is that, as the title of one report quotes, “My child is my report card” (Ng et al., Reference Ng, Pomerantz and Deng2014). As the authors suggest, the higher rate of controlling behavior that they found among Chinese mothers, in contrast to American mothers, may well be due to differences in the extent to which mothers’ feelings of self-worth are contingent on their children’s academic success, with Chinese mothers rating higher on this association.

A frequently noted aspect of the Asian “educating parent” style is the emphasis on criticism as a motivating force for both intellectual and moral development. Florrie Fei-Yin Ng, now a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, for example, recounted a childhood memory of coming home with a score of 95 (out of 100) on a school assignment (Center for the Study of Culture Health and Human Development, 2021). Although 95 was in fact an excellent grade, her mother’s response was to focus on the missing five points, that is, what went wrong, and how could she have done better? Professor Ng’s own research aligns closely with her personal experience. She and colleagues Eva Pomerantz and Shui-fong Lam, for example, note that Asian parents tend to emphasize failure and deemphasize success in their children’s academic performance. Explanations of this cultural pattern include the traditional Confucian focus on self-improvement, a belief that effort (rather than innate ability) is the most powerful influence on success, and the economic importance of academic achievement in Chinese society (Ng et al., Reference Ng, Pomerantz and Lam2007).

Middle-class American mothers also exemplify the “educating mother” profile, but with a distinct focus on “stimulation” for growth rather than learning per se, and praise rather than criticism. In our research, American mothers of 2-month-old infants, like their Korean counterparts, talked about their babies in cognitive terms (Harkness et al., Reference Harkness, Super, Moscardino, Rha, Blom, Huitrón, Johnston, Sutherland, Hyun, Axia and Palacios2007). As one mother recounted:

These US mothers’ attention to their babies’ cognitive development often seemed to refer to norms that they had learned about by reading books of advice for parents. One mother explained:

As these babies grow into early childhood, the American parents’ focus on teaching extends to getting their child ready for kindergarten or even preschool. In a comparative study of parents and preschools in the United States, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, for example, almost 70% of the US parents said they thought that parents should teach their preschool child school-related skills. In contrast, parents in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands overwhelmingly rejected this idea. As one Spanish mother explained, “I think that is the job of teachers who have studied for this [teaching]. The teachers don’t know how to do my job, and I shouldn’t want to do theirs” (Harkness et al. Reference Harkness, Super, Bonichini, Ríos Bermúdez, Mavridis, van Schaik, Tomkunas and Palacios2020, p. 132). An Italian mother of a 4-year-old concurred, drawing a contrast with her perception of US ideas about parenting: “We teach him sometimes, but in a ‘soft’ way, and only if he asks for it. For example, I show him things, explain, but I do not insist, because children have their own maturation rhythms … yes, not like the Americans who want their children to grow up becoming little geniuses … I prefer to respect his developmental timing, he needs a time to play, because at primary school things get much more demanding” (ibid., p. 132). The Dutch parents were unanimous in their opposition to teaching their young children school-related skills, but they allowed for the possibility of doing educational activities with their children, as long as it was not (as one father put it), “with an eye to the future or his career.” Another Dutch father commented on the approach to learning taken both at preschool and at home: “So, I don’t think she has to learn anything. As long as she’s doing things she enjoys … she’s only 5” (ibid., p. 133).

The American parents’ focus on the importance of supporting the child’s self-esteem contrasts with not only the Asian parents but also the European parents in our research. We were prompted by the American parents’ frequent reference to this idea to explore it with parents in our five European samples. Interestingly, we found that the term “self-esteem” itself was almost impossible to translate; the closest that our European colleagues could suggest was more like “self-confidence.” A tabulation of themes in parent interviews across the six cultural samples showed a unique American emphasis on self-esteem, together with academic success and autonomy. These parents also talked about emotional closeness and a loving home, but less frequently than did all the European parents. The pairing of self-esteem with academic success in this analysis suggests why American parents seem to be so preoccupied with this theme. Namely, it is not easy to maintain a positive view of oneself in the highly competitive environment surrounding American children today. In this context, emotion regulation becomes a challenge of its own as parents attempt to maximize their child’s development while keeping some sense of their own selves as beings worthy of praise or at least appreciation. The title of Jennifer Senior’s (Reference Senior2014) popular book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting captures the essence of this challenge.

10.6 Culture Change and the New Challenges of Being a Good Parent

Traditional ethnographic portraits of faraway places that were the focus of anthropologists in the early years of the field often included a last chapter about culture change, implying a contrast with the ostensibly stable social organization that had prevailed for generations. In reality, of course, cultures have always experienced change due to migrations, climate change, war, and population health events. Recent years, however, have brought more rapid change affecting families and communities. For example, Tsamaase et al. (Reference Tsamaase, Harkness and Super2020) describe traditional child-rearing patterns in rural Botswana as involving the entire extended family and community, in which maternal grandmothers played a special role as overseers of care for both their daughters and their grandchildren. Recent economic changes, however, including the growth of the diamond mining sector, have opened new employment options for women as well as men. Many young women have migrated to cities for salaried jobs, far from their families of origin and thus deprived of the communal care that their children would have received. This demographic change has required newly isolated urban nuclear families to find paid help by women unrelated to their families, and often from different cultural backgrounds. Grandmothers, in the meantime, find themselves increasingly burdened with primary care of children whose parents are not available to participate.

As we write the final pages of this chapter, we have just received news of the death of a dearly remembered man of the community where we lived and did research in the 1970s, and where our first child was born. Arap Mitei was born in the 1920s and lived through multiple culture changes that affected him directly, from serving as a housekeeper to British settlers during the colonial era, to becoming a farmer of his own property after Independence in 1963. Upon our arrival, he drew from his earlier training to take care of us, our house, our garden. Over the years, Arap Mitei became a respected boiyot, an elder in the community with a wife and many children and grandchildren. He raised his sons to become successful farmers, a manager of a safari company, a driver for a nongovernmental organization, and a security guard in a nearby town. His daughters are married and, like all mothers in Kokwet, farmers. In his last years, Arap Mitei suffered from dementia, but his family took loving and respectful care of him in his own home. His memory will be preserved through a new science lab for the local secondary school, a building originally constructed by the British settler who was given the land by the colonial government, and which became our home during our stay in the community before being changed into a school where none had been before, another bit of culture change in Arap Mitei’s community.

Changes in European and other postindustrial societies, although perhaps less visible than the changes in rural Africa, also shift the challenges of being a good parent. All the fathers in our seven-culture study described being more emotionally close to their children than what they had experienced with their own fathers. Economic changes have altered the predominance of the traditional single-earner family, and demographic changes include a wider variety of family forms and roles. A general although not universal trend is the increasing isolation of the nuclear family in both Western and non-Western settings. All of these entail changes in parental roles, with their accompanying demands on emotion regulation.

10.7 Culture and Emotion Regulation

The challenges of being a “good parent” are but one piece of the puzzle of culture (Harkness, Reference Harkness2023). Like a single jigsaw piece, they cannot be understood without some sense of the larger picture, for they necessarily reflect tradition and change, economics and psychology, and the experiences of individuals in families and community. Ideas about what makes a good parent are a core aspect of what it means to belong to a particular cultural place and time. Emotion regulation is a universal challenge of parenting (as well as successful functioning more generally), but its expression necessarily varies across cultures, even within the contemporary Western world, as captured by psychologist John Nash’s account of passengers disembarking from ships at an Australian port:

Based on the contrast between the Italian and British passengers in this scene, we might ask which group evidenced better emotion regulation. The answer, of course, is neither. Passengers in both groups were expressing their emotions in a culturally appropriate and thus well-regulated manner. In contrast to the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, Reference Gross2015; see also Chapter 2), the passengers disembarking in Sydney may not have experienced any of the four stages of emotion regulation described by this model; rather, they arrived at the Sydney ocean terminal equipped with cultural models that directed their expression of emotion (and probably their inner experience of it) without any felt effort. Critically, they were met by other members of the same cultural places who knew how to interpret their expressions, whether cries of joy or calm and pleasant greetings.

It is noteworthy that the contrasts observed by Nash were based on two cultural places that are rather similar in global perspective. Potthoff and colleagues (Reference Potthoff, Garnefski, Miklósi, Ubbiali, Domínguez-Sánchez, Martins, Witthöft and Kraaij2016) have pointed to other differences in emotional display rules within the limited European context. In northern Europe, they found Germans and Dutch making less use of cognitive strategies such as rumination and other-blame, in regulating their emotional responses, compared to participants from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Hungary. More widely, Matsumoto et al. (Reference Matsumoto, Yoo and Fontaine2008) have demonstrated large cross-national variation in emotional expressivity in general, as well as in the open display of specific emotions such as happiness. Developmental studies demonstrate that at least some of these “rules” are learned within the opening months of life (e.g. Lavelli et al., Reference Lavelli, Carra, Rossi and Keller2019).

Observations of parents and children in various cultural contexts illustrate variation in the challenges of parenting, in contrast to simpler formulations based on the purported value of children in relation to economic development. Nevertheless, cross-cultural studies suggest some basic universals in parents’ ideas. In a recent survey of parents’ definitions of the “ideal parent” in 37 countries, the authors found that the theme of being “loving” was “the core of ideal-parent beliefs” in all the Western “culture zones,” whereas the African zone featured “responsibility” and “respect” and the Asian zone emphasized the themes of “family” plus “responsibility” (Lin et al., Reference Lin, Mikolajczak, Keller, Akgun, Arikan, Aunola, Barham, Besson, Blanchard, Boujut, Brianda, Brytek-Matera, César, Chen, Dorard, dos Santos Elias, Dunsmuir, Egorova, Escobar and Roskam2023). Although the cultural variability evident in these themes is evident, they all support a positive view of what it takes to be a good parent. Successfully meeting those challenges in their local manifestation is in turn the basis of parents’ own sense of well-being and thus of their ability to regulate their own emotions and those of their children.

Dyadic parent–child emotion regulation is a bidirectional developmental process that occurs over the span of more than a decade. Accordingly, the measurement of these interactions and subsequent analysis poses challenges for researchers to translate the theory of complex processes into study design and statistical models capable of inferring directionality and causality. In this chapter, we explore the interplay between parent and child emotion regulation to facilitate a better understanding of opportunities and challenges for improved measurement of these dynamic processes. We begin with a brief review that introduces the corpus of theory regarding interpersonal emotion regulation, directions of effects, and intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation. Then, we cover conceptual, methodological and analytic considerations while providing useful strategies for designing and implementing cutting edge studies on the interactive effects of parent and child emotion regulation.

11.1 Developing a Theoretical Foundation to Study Interactive Dyadic Emotion Regulation

11.2 Assessing Dyadic Interactions and Parent Emotion Regulation

The preceding review outlined some of the complexity in the dynamic processes of parent–child emotion regulation interactions. We turn now to assessment strategies. Investigating dyadic emotion regulation begins with study design. Prior to data collection, researchers must consider the research question and what process that reflects, feasibility of methods, and analytic techniques. There have been compelling arguments for the implementation of innovative paradigms to capture dyadic emotion regulation and for employing context-sensitive studies of emotion regulation influences (Dixon-Gordon et al., Reference Dixon-Gordon, Bernecker and Christensen2015; Morris et al., Reference Morris, Cui, Criss, Simmons and Cole2018).

In this section, we review (1) assessment methods to measure parent–child dyadic interactions related to emotion, including surveys, interactive tasks, and physiological methods; (2) challenges researchers encounter when investigating these processes; and (3) suggestions for overcoming these challenges.

11.3 Statistical Approaches for Analyzing Dyadic Interactions and Emotion Regulation in the Context of Parenting

In the preceding sections, we described methods of assessing dyadic interactions in the context of emotion regulation and parenting and the associated challenges and opportunities. A potential barrier to conducting a study on this topic is lack of knowledge regarding analytic methods and potential inferences. In this section, we describe some considerations when analyzing dyadic data and provide brief overviews and examples of analytic methods that are appropriate for addressing research questions on emotion regulation and parenting while pointing to further resources.

11.3.2 Analytic Strategies

11.3.2.1 Actor–Partner Interdependence Model

The application of the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kenny et al., Reference Kenny, Kashy and Cook2006) permits evaluation of bidirectional effects in the context of interpersonal relationships (Cook & Kenny, Reference Cook and Kenny2005). The APIM tests the effect of one individual’s predictor on their own outcome, as well as on the outcome of their dyadic partner (and vice versa), all within one model (Stas et al., Reference Stas, Kenny, Mayer and Loeys2018). To use the APIM, both dyad members must have data on a predictor and an outcome variable. APIM derives both actor and partner effects, enabling a test of interpersonal and intrapersonal processes. In other words, one can investigate the association between a characteristic (e.g. emotion regulation ability) and an outcome (e.g. depression symptoms) for both dyad members, controlling for the influence of the other. A significant actor effect indicates one’s own characteristics are related to one’s own outcome, whereas a significant partner effect indicates one dyad member’s characteristics are related to another’s outcome. If both partner effects are significant, it suggests bidirectional influence, but one significant partner effect indicates interdependence (Cook & Kenny, Reference Cook and Kenny2005).

APIM models can be implemented using structural equation modeling (SEM) or multilevel modeling (MLM). To assist with analysis and interpretation, several R Shiny apps have been made available by David Kenny and colleagues that allow the investigator to upload a data set and derive output of results, including tables, figures, text summarizing the analysis and results, and code (DyadR)Footnote ¹. Briefly, APIM using SEM is recommended for dyads who are distinguishable, meaning dyad members differ according to an attribute like sex or gender, or family role (e.g. parent, child; Ledermann & Kenny, Reference Ledermann and Kenny2017). Should researchers select this method, there is an R Shiny app (APIM-SEM)Footnote ² that executes the analysis, provides text interpretation of the findings, along with tables, figures, and R code, although it is not necessary that researchers know R programming to use this resource (Stas et al., Reference Stas, Kenny, Mayer and Loeys2018). MLM APIM is recommended when dyad members are not distinguishable (same-sex roommates; Ledermann & Kenny, Reference Ledermann and Kenny2017), which may be less relevant in the study of parent–youth emotion regulation. Best practices for APIM have been reviewed elsewhere (Ledermann & Kenny, Reference Ledermann and Kenny2017; Stas et al., Reference Stas, Kenny, Mayer and Loeys2018). Versions of this model have been adapted for longitudinal data as well (Bolger & Laurenceau, Reference Bolger, Laurenceau, Kenny and Little2013; Savord et al., Reference Savord, McNeish, Iida, Quiroz and Ha2022), one of which includes a Shiny app (L-APIMFootnote ³; Gistelinck & Loeys, Reference Gistelinck and Loeys2019). Longitudinal APIM has recently been applied to parent–child emotion regulation (Boeve et al., Reference Boeve, Beeghly, Stacks, Manning and Thomason2019). This approach stands to enhance our understanding of the unfolding of dyadic parent–child emotion regulation over time.

There are several examples of the APIM implemented to investigate parent–youth emotion regulation. First, given that psychopathology can be a manifestation of persistent emotional dysregulation (Aldao et al., Reference Aldao, Gee, De Los Reyes and Seager2016; Sheppes et al., Reference Sheppes, Suri and Gross2015), in a study of adolescents hospitalized for treatment of acute psychiatric symptoms and their parents, researchers used the APIM to probe the association between self-reports on one’s own difficulty with emotion regulation and depression symptoms (Wolff et al., Reference Wolff, Thomas, Hood, Bettis, Rizzo and Liu2020). There were significant actor effects between difficulty accessing emotion regulation strategies and depression symptoms. Further, there was a significant negative partner effect for parental impulsive emotion regulation and adolescent depressive symptoms, demonstrating interdependence between parents and adolescents. Second, a study investigated the associations between parents’ and adolescents’ reports of sources of parental knowledge with observed parent and adolescent behavior during a conflict discussion task, based on the rationale that how parents and adolescents interact and manage their emotions when resolving conflict (i.e. a goal-directed activity) will be associated with processes of parental monitoring (Thomas et al., Reference Thomas, Deros, Jain, Jacobs and De Los Reyes2022). Behavioral codes came from attachment domains representing behavioral categories that either helps or hurts the dyad’s goal of resolving the conflict topic. Hostile behavior (e.g. mocking) and an attachment domain known as Secure Base Use (adolescent) or Secure Base Provision (parent) (e.g. validation, smiling) were coded by trained staff for each dyad member. Adolescent reports of greater adolescent disclosure about their activities and whereabouts were associated with more secure base behavior exhibited by both adolescents (actor effects) and parents (partner effect), as well as less hostile behavior exhibited by both adolescents (actor effects) and parents (partner effect; Thomas et al., Reference Thomas, Deros, Jain, Jacobs and De Los Reyes2022). These findings support the interdependence of sources of parental knowledge that are related to monitoring, and manifestations of emotion regulation processes during a conflict discussion task (see Figure 11.1, for example APIM figure).

CC BY 4.0 SARAH THOMAS

Figure 11.1 Illustration of cross-sectional Actor–Partner Interdependence Models

Note. (a) Unstandardized parameter estimates of actor and partner effects for adolescent- and parent-reports of Adolescent Disclosure in relation to Secure Base behavior, controlling for the effects of age, sex, and sample source (covariate parameters not included in figure). (b) Unstandardized parameter estimates of actor and partner effects for adolescent- and parent-reports of Adolescent Disclosure in relation to Hostile behavior, controlling for the effects of age, sex, and sample source (covariate parameters not included in the figure). Standard errors are presented in parentheses. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

11.3.2.2 Other Strategies

The APIM is not appropriate for all dyadic data, such as with only a youth outcome. In those situations, it is important to use an analytic strategy that will account for the nonindependent nature of the data. Options include generalized estimating equations (Hanley et al., Reference Hanley, Negassa, Edwardes and Forrester2003), MLM (Page-Gould, Reference Page-Gould, Cacioppo, Tassinary and Berntson2017), latent growth models for longitudinal data (Muniz-Terrera et al., Reference Muniz-Terrera, Robitaille, Kelly, Johansson, Hofer and Piccinin2017), and SEM. SEM permits evaluation of multivariate causal relations and these methods have significantly enhanced our understanding of the bidirectional nature of parent–child interactive effects (e.g. Micalizzi et al., Reference Micalizzi, Ronald and Saudino2016, Reference Micalizzi, Wang and Saudino2017). A specific model that is widely used is the cross-lagged panel model, a discrete-time structural equation model that can be used to analyze panel data where variables are assessed at least twice over time. The goal of these models is to examine the effect of one variable on the other variable (and vice versa) over time. Furthermore, SEM could be used if a researcher wished to analyze data from two parents and one youth (Kerr et al., Reference Kerr, Rasmussen, Smiley, Buttitta and Borelli2021; Li et al., Reference Li, Li, Wu and Wang2019). Detailed options for analytic strategies have been reviewed elsewhere (e.g. Gates & Liu, Reference Gates and Liu2016; Thorson et al., Reference Thorson, West and Mendes2018).

11.3.2.3 Latent Growth Curve

To measure a behavior over time, latent growth curve models enable assessment of slope and intercept, which can be used to assess the average rate of change in a construct, like emotion regulation. Further, by adding time-varying covariates, one can determine if another variable covaries with the behavior of interest. Consequently, it is also possible to evaluate parent–youth associations related to emotion regulation with growth curve models. To illustrate, researchers used growth curve analyses in a sample of mother–child dyads (half of the mothers were randomized to emotion regulation skills treatment) to investigate how change in maternal emotion regulation over 12 months was related to both the starting point and change in youth emotion regulation (Byrd et al., Reference Byrd, Lee, Frigoletto, Zalewski and Stepp2021). In another example, in the context of an intervention for comorbid adolescent psychiatric disorders and substance use, when assessing past 7-day cannabis use over time during and after an intervention, a time-varying covariate of parental frustration was used to determine how cannabis and parental frustration were related over time (Thomas et al., Reference Thomas, Brick, Micalizzi, Wolff, Frazier, Graves, Esposito-Smytherse and Spirito2020). This analytic technique has important implications for considering how the emotional facets of parent–adolescent relationships can be integral to the fluctuation of target behavior of an intervention over time. Despite the intervention, weekly cannabis use increased across the 1-year follow-up time, and parental ratings of frustration that were higher than their average were associated with greater adolescent cannabis use at baseline, 3-, and 6-month follow-up. This analytic strategy could be used to understand influence over time in parent–youth relationships and emotion regulation.

11.4 Future Directions

Future directions to advance the study of dynamic parent–youth interactions pertaining to emotion regulation involve thoughtfully selected study designs, the integration of complex technology, and collection of longitudinal data on both short- and long-term time scales. First, with the advent of wearable technology and passive sensing that can detect geo-location, study designs that prompt parents and youth to respond on EMA measures of emotion regulation when they are in the same location can also provide valuable insight into these interactions in the real world (Bettis et al., Reference Bettis, Burke, Nesi and Liu2022; Silk, Reference Silk2019). Second, incorporating parental role into design and measurement will enable inferences about maternal versus paternal or primary versus secondary caregiver role on emotion regulation dynamics, which has been undertaken by few researchers (Kerr et al., Reference Kerr, Rasmussen, Smiley, Buttitta and Borelli2021; Li et al., Reference Li, Li, Wu and Wang2019). Finally, to adequately capture the protracted, bidirectional development process of emotion regulation, studies are needed that can measure these dynamics from infancy through adulthood. This will be a large undertaking, and will benefit from support from funding agency stakeholders, as well as harnessing the potential of existing large, longitudinal studies (e.g. Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study [ABCD] and HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study). Although the ABCD Study includes measures of emotion regulation, data have not been released that capture continuous assessment of parent and child emotion regulation that would allow inference of individual’s abilities and how these covary over time. However, because the sample is so large (e.g. 11,875 youth at baseline) and assessments include numerous domains, it may be possible to derive a latent factor representing emotion regulation that could be investigated over time as youth develop. In conclusion, measuring the dynamic processes supporting parent and youth emotion regulation requires careful consideration and a range of skill, and so research teams that bring a variety of skill sets supporting the measurement and analysis of these processes will be well-equipped to address the challenges necessary to advance this field.

11.5 Conclusions

In this chapter, we reviewed the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of dynamic parent–youth emotion regulation processes, their measurement, and analysis. The very type of research designs and analyses that could advance the field of parent–youth dynamics of emotion regulation are still underused (Keijsers et al., Reference Keijsers, Boele and Bulow2022; Silk, Reference Silk2019). These research gaps represent promising opportunities for innovative study designs, and with technological advancements (Bettis et al., Reference Bettis, Burke, Nesi and Liu2022; Girard & Cohn, Reference Girard and Cohn2016; Silk, Reference Silk2019; Stas et al., Reference Stas, Kenny, Mayer and Loeys2018), conducting these types of studies may be more accessible to researchers than ever before.

The transition to parenthood is a time of psychological change that serves to support parent and child development. While a breadth of research in animal studies of the neurobiology of maternal behavior exists (Pawluski et al., Reference Pawluski, Hoekzema, Leuner and Lonstein2021), efforts to identify the neurobiology of parenthood in humans is a more recent endeavor (Mayes et al., Reference Mayes, Rutherford, Suchman and Close2012). Investigating the neurobiology of parenting has theoretical value in understanding periods of adult development but has important clinical implications when considering contexts where parents may struggle in their caregiving role, with consequences for their own and their child’s well-being (Squire & Stein, Reference Squire and Stein2003). Critically, a common challenge for all new parents is the capacity to regulate their own and their child’s emotions, especially during infancy and early childhood. In particular, it has been hypothesized that one outcome of the neural and psychological reorganization during the transition to parenthood is to support the unique demands of parental emotion regulation (Rutherford, Wallace, et al., Reference Rutherford, Booth, Luyten, Bridgett and Mayes2015).

In this chapter, the neurobiology of human parenting is examined and implications for emotion regulation considered. Specifically, studies documenting maternal brain structure and function are reviewed. In advancing this area of inquiry, several studies will also be described that have examined maternal neural responses to negative stimuli (infant and noninfant) following distraction and cognitive reappraisal instructions to examine the neurobiological basis of parental emotion regulation more directly. Importantly, most parental brain research focuses on mothers, representing an inherent limitation to our understanding of this critical transitional period for nonbirthing parents, including fathers. While the studies discussed here focus on the maternal brain, where fathers are included this is noted, and the importance of understanding the paternal and nonbirthing parent brain is revisited when considering the next steps for this body of work.

12.1 Maternal Brain Structure

Only a handful of studies have examined the impact of pregnancy and the postpartum period on maternal brain structure, with a specific focus on gray matter (GM) volume measured using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Specifically, these studies of GM volume indicate both growth and decline in GM during the perinatal period. In the first investigation of changing GM volume across the postpartum period, mothers completed an MRI scan at 2–4 weeks postpartum and again at 3–4 months postpartum (Kim, Leckman, Mayes, Feldman, et al., Reference Kim, Leckman, Mayes, Feldman, Wang and Swain2010). GM volume increases over time were observed in the parietal lobes, prefrontal cortex, and the midbrain (including the hypothalamus, amygdala, and substantia nigra). Critically, GM growth in the midbrain areas was associated with mothers’ positive perceptions of their child, linking maternal brain structure to real-world parenting. Luders et al. (Reference Luders, Kurth, Gingnell, Engman, Yong, Poromaa and Gaser2020) also found widespread GM increases from 1–2 days post delivery to 4–6 weeks following delivery in recent mothers, including in the pre- and postcentral gyrus, middle and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), insula, parietal and temporal lobes, and the thalamus. Including a control group of nulliparous women, Lisofsky et al. (Reference Lisofsky, Gallinat, Lindenberger and Kühn2019) also showed maternal GM volume increases from 2 months to 4–5 months postpartum in numerous regions, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, middle frontal gyrus, cerebellum, and nucleus accumbens. Taken together, these studies suggest significant growth of the maternal brain during the postpartum period as indexed by GM volume.

Although the majority of structural MRI studies have focused on the maternal brain postpartum, one study has examined GM volume in nulliparous women prior to conception and then again in the postpartum period to examine the impact of pregnancy on the maternal brain. In this study, Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) reported decreased GM volume in multiple brain areas from pregnancy to approximately 2 months postpartum, including across the anterior and posterior midline, and the lateral prefrontal and temporal cortex. Notably, fathers and a control group of men without children were scanned following the same timeline as the nulliparous women to examine whether the experience of becoming a parent, versus the biological experience of pregnancy, would lead to structural GM changes. Importantly, no difference in GM volume over time was observed between fathers and the men without children. Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) concluded that it was the biological experience of pregnancy underscoring the GM volume changes observed in nulliparous women, rather than the transition to parenthood alone.

These findings by Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) build on prior work evidencing reduced brain volume in women scanned during pregnancy and again in the postpartum period (Oatridge et al., Reference Oatridge, Holdcroft, Saeed, Hajnal, Puri, Fusi and Bydder2002). While the widespread reductions in GM volume were the primary focus of the Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) study, GM growth within the hippocampus from preconception to the postpartum period was also reported. Although GM volume decline may have negative connotations, decreased GM volume may reflect neural reorganization of the maternal brain conferring a benefit through “fine tuning” the brain to support mother and child well-being (Pawluski et al., Reference Pawluski, Hoekzema, Leuner and Lonstein2021).

In sum, the maternal brain undergoes significant structural reorganization during pregnancy and the postpartum period, evidenced by GM growth and decline. Of note, these structural brain changes in response to motherhood do not appear transitory; GM volume reductions reported by Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) were still apparent at 2 years postpartum, with a follow-up study evidencing the persistence of GM volume reductions 6 years later in a subset of women from the original sample (Martínez-García et al., Reference Martínez-García, Paternina-Die, Barba-Müller, Martín de Blas, Beumala, Cortizo, Pozzobon, Marcos-Vidal, Fernández-Pena, Picado, Belmonte-Padilla, Massó-Rodriguez, Ballesteros, Desco, Vilarroya, Hoekzema and Carmona2021). Critically, many of the brain regions identified in structural GM studies of the maternal brain overlap with those implicated in emotion regulation (Etkin et al., Reference Etkin, Büchel and Gross2015), suggesting the structural plasticity of the perinatal period (and beyond) may be important in our understanding of maternal emotion regulation, and parenting more generally.

12.2 Maternal Brain Function

The majority of maternal brain research has used functional MRI (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine neural responses to infant stimuli (infant faces and vocalizations) as an index of maternal brain function (Maupin et al., Reference Maupin, Hayes, Mayes and Rutherford2015; Parsons et al., Reference Parsons, Young, Stein and Kringelbach2017; Swain, Reference Swain2011). Both these neuroimaging approaches provide insight into the detection and processing of salient infant signals (or cues) within and across samples of parents and nonparents. Importantly, neural responses to infant signals may reflect both reactivity and regulatory responding in the maternal brain. For instance, when presented with infant distress signals, neurobiological markers of reactivity to infant cry may be modulated by maternal regulatory function. Thus, reactivity and regulatory responding to infant signals may be interwoven, presenting a potential limitation when interpreting maternal neural responses to infant signals to inform the neurobiology of emotion regulation and parenting.

Nevertheless, converging lines of research have identified several “parental brain networks” responsive to infant cues that include brain areas implicated in mentalization, empathy, and emotion regulation (Feldman, Reference Feldman2015). This latter emotion regulation network includes the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and the frontopolar cortex. The identification of these parental brain networks has been driven by research that presents infant face and cry stimuli, including stimuli from mother’s own child. Infant faces are hypothesized to be particularly salient cues motivating caregiving, activating brain regions implicated in reward processing in parents and nonparents (Glocker et al., Reference Glocker, Langleben, Ruparel, Loughead, Gur and Sachser2009; Kringelbach et al., Reference Kringelbach, Stark, Alexander, Bornstein and Stein2016; Lorenz, Reference Lorenz1943). Given the breadth of work in this area, an increasing number of meta-analyses have been conducted to refine understanding on maternal brain function. In meta-analytic fMRI maternal brain research, heightened reactivity to own as compared to unfamiliar infant faces (only positive and neutral expressions) is reported as prominent in the midbrain (substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area), amygdala, striatum, insula, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC; Rigo et al., Reference Rigo, Kim, Esposito, Putnick, Venuti and Bornstein2019; see also Paul et al., Reference Paul, Austin, Elliott, Ellison-Wright, Wan, Drake, Downey, Elmadih, Mukherjee, Heaney, Williams and Abel2019). Across parents and nonparents, meta-analytic maternal (and nonparent) ERP work has evidenced increased neural responding to infant distress as compared to positive and neutral infant faces (Kuzava et al., Reference Kuzava, Frost, Perrone, Kang, Lindhiem and Bernard2020).

Although maternal brain function can be studied in isolation by examining neural patterns of responding to infant cues, to understand the functional significance of these neural responses, an increasing number of studies are incorporating measures of both maternal brain and behavior. For instance, ERP responses to infant faces in mothers have been associated with sensitive and intrusive maternal behavior observed during interaction tasks (Bernard et al., Reference Bernard, Simons and Dozier2015; Endendijk et al., Reference Endendijk, Spencer, van Baar and Bos2018; Kuzava et al., Reference Kuzava, Nissim, Frost, Nelson and Bernard2019). Notably, one study measured ERP responses to infant faces in the third trimester of pregnancy and again at 3–5 months postpartum, finding that changing neural responses to infant faces was associated with postpartum maternal bonding (Dudek et al., Reference Dudek, Colasante, Zuffianò and Haley2020).

Understanding the sources of variability in maternal processing of infant faces has also been explored, recognizing that while parental brain networks exist, each person transitions to parenthood differently, reflected in the uniqueness of their current or previous life experiences. Indeed, maternal early experiences as indexed by attachment security has also been associated with maternal neural responses to infant faces in fMRI and ERP studies (e.g. Groh & Haydon, Reference Groh and Haydon2018; Lowell et al., Reference Lowell, Dell, Potenza, Strathearn, Mayes and Rutherford2021; Strathearn et al., Reference Strathearn, Fonagy, Amico and Montague2009). Concurrently, studies of maternal infant face processing have been informative in beginning to understand where challenges related to emotion regulation may emerge and affect caregiving. Specifically, a number of studies have examined how symptoms of emotion dysregulation may contribute to neural reactivity to infant face stimuli. Specifically, neural responses to infant faces may be modulated by depression (Bjertrup et al., Reference Bjertrup, Friis and Miskowiak2019), anxiety (Yatziv et al., Reference Yatziv, Vancor, Bunderson and Rutherford2021), and maternal substance use (Rutherford et al., Reference Rutherford, Kim, Yip, Potenza, Mayes and Strathearn2021). Taken together, these studies evidence that maternal brain function can be captured by neural responses to infant facial cues and may have important implications for maternal behavior, including emotion regulation and sensitive caregiving.

Infant cries have also been employed to probe maternal brain function. Behavioral and neuroimaging data suggest parental responding to infant cries may be consistent across cultures (Bornstein et al., Reference Bornstein, Putnick, Rigo, Esposito, Swain, Suwalsky, Su, Du, Zhang, Cote, De Pisapia and Venuti2017). Notably too, several neuroimaging studies indicate that parents (mothers and fathers) respond to infant signals differently to nonparents, particularly when infants express distress (e.g. Proverbio et al., Reference Proverbio, Brignone, Matarazzo, Del Zotto and Zani2006; Purhonen et al., Reference Purhonen, Kilpeläinen-Lees, Pääkkönen, Yppärilä, Lehtonen and Karhu2001; Seifritz et al., Reference Seifritz, Esposito, Neuhoff, Luthi, Mustovic, Dammann, von Bardeleben, Radue, Cirillo, Tedeschi and Di Salle2003). In particular, the latter studies suggest a heightened response to infant distress cues in parents as compared to nonparents. Heightened responding to infant distress may confer an adaptive advantage for the developing child in eliciting caregiving behavior. Consistent with this hypothesis, infant cries have been shown to activate midbrain dopaminergic regions implicated in reward neural circuity, presumably motivating approach to elicit caregiving behavior in some maternal brain studies (Rilling, Reference Rilling2013). However, infant cries may also be dysregulating for parents. Indeed, one of the earliest challenges many parents face is regulating their own emotional response to their crying child, while also trying to help their child become more regulated (Rutherford, Wallace, et al., Reference Rutherford, Booth, Luyten, Bridgett and Mayes2015). Although there is variability in mothers’ capacity to tolerate infant distress (Rutherford, Booth, et al., Reference Rutherford, Booth, Luyten, Bridgett and Mayes2015; Rutherford et al., Reference Rutherford, Goldberg, Luyten, Bridgett and Mayes2013), inconsolable infant crying has been linked with harsh and abusive parenting during the postpartum period (Barr, Reference Barr2014). Given associations between increased reactivity to infant cries and negative parenting behaviors, interventions have been designed to help parents regulate during bouts of infant crying during the early postpartum months (e.g. Bechtel et al., Reference Bechtel, Gaither and Leventhal2020).

Given the importance of parental responding to infant cries, a number of studies have examined neural responses to varying types of infant cry stimuli in maternal samples (Witteman et al., Reference Witteman, Van IJzendoorn, Rilling, Bos, Schiller and Bakermans-Kranenburg2019). Converging evidence supports the notion that neural responding to infant cries is associated with caregiving behavior. Musser et al. (Reference Musser, Kaiser-Laurent and Ablow2012) found that maternal sensitive behavior measured at 18 months postpartum was associated with neural responses to infant cries, including in the IFG and right frontal pole. Similarly, neural responding to infant cries in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and amygdala measured at 2–4 weeks postpartum was associated with maternal sensitivity measured at 3–4 months postpartum (Kim et al., Reference Kim, Feldman, Mayes, Eicher, Thompson, Leckman and Swain2011). Activity in the right frontal insula cortex, rolandic operculum, and subcortical regions (e.g. amygdala, hippocampus) in response to mothers listening to own infant cries has also been associated with maternal mental state talk during an interaction with their child (Hipwell et al., Reference Hipwell, Guo, Phillips, Swain and Moses-Kolko2015). While maternal sensitive behavior and use of mental state language are believed important antecedents for child development, Laurent and Ablow (Reference Laurent and Ablow2012) advanced this area of work by evidencing that mothers’ brain responses to own infant cry predicted their child’s attachment security – evidencing for the first time a link between maternal neurobiology and child developmental outcomes.

A number of other factors have been associated with maternal brain responses to infant cries. Clinically, maternal substance use has also been associated with decreased and delayed neural responses to unfamiliar infant cries (Rutherford et al., Reference Rutherford, Kim, Yip, Potenza, Mayes and Strathearn2021), whereas maternal depression has been associated with altered responding to own and unfamiliar infant cries (Bjertrup et al., Reference Bjertrup, Friis and Miskowiak2019). Poverty and maternal distress have been associated with decreased responses to infant cries, including in the medial prefrontal gyrus, middle prefrontal gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus (STG; Kim et al., Reference Kim, Capistrano and Congleton2016). Building on this work, increased exposure to a variety of stressors has also been associated with decreased cry responses in the right insula/IFG and STG, activity which was also linked with maternal sensitivity (Kim et al., Reference Kim, Tribble, Olsavsky, Dufford, Erhart, Hansen, Grande and Gonzalez2020). Finally, it is worth noting that there are preliminary data to suggest that both mode of delivery (vaginal versus cesarean section; Swain et al., Reference Swain, Tasgin, Mayes, Feldman, Todd Constable and Leckman2008) and feeding (exclusive breastfeeding versus exclusive formula feeding; Kim et al., Reference Kim, Feldman, Mayes, Eicher, Thompson, Leckman and Swain2011) may also shape maternal brain responding to their own infant’s cries.

Taken together, employing infant face and cry stimuli in experimental tasks may be particularly valuable to probe reactivity and regulation in the maternal brain and how this may be associated with caregiving behavior. Notably, some studies have also linked maternal brain structure with functional brain responses to these salient infant stimuli. Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) reported that the regions evidencing GM volume reductions from pregnancy to postpartum were those regions that were activated when mothers viewed images of their infants during the postpartum MRI scan. Moreover, individual differences in perceived maternal care may shape both brain structure and function: mothers reporting higher level of maternal care in their own childhood, relative to those with lower levels of maternal care, evidenced greater GM volume and increased reactivity to infant cries in overlapping areas, including the MFG, STG, and fusiform gyrus (Kim, Leckman, Mayes, Newman, et al., Reference Kim, Leckman, Mayes, Feldman, Wang and Swain2010). Therefore, it is important to consider both structural and functional brain changes during the transition to parenthood wherever possible to bridge these two methodological approaches, incorporating maternal characteristics too.

12.3 Empirical Studies of the Neurobiology of Maternal Emotion Regulation

In the research reviewed thus far, the focus has been on brain structure and functional response to infant cues in mothers. Although informative in understanding the neurobiology of parenting, as described earlier, reactivity and regulatory responding to these infant cues may be confounded and caution is warranted with interpreting these findings within an emotion regulation framework. Critically, an emerging body of research has begun to address this issue by focusing specifically on the neurobiological basis of regulatory responding to affective stimuli in maternal samples. Firk et al. (Reference Firk, Dahmen, Lehmann, Herpertz-Dahlmann and Konrad2018) investigated whether self-distraction would modulate neural responses to infant crying in primiparous mothers 5–8 months postpartum. In this context, self-distraction refers to the emotion regulation strategy of orienting attention away from an affective experience. Mothers in this sample evidenced a decreased response to infant cries in the amygdala, as well as the parahippocampal gyrus, insula, OFC, STG/MTG, precuneus, and cerebellum, when completing a counting task while infant cries were played, relative to when they were instructed only to listen to infant cries. Critically, this downregulation of the amygdala during self-distraction was associated with observed parenting behavior, such that higher levels of maternal sensitivity and nonhostility were correlated with less reactivity to infant cries during the self-distraction task. These findings evidenced for the first-time that an emotion regulation strategy can modulate the maternal brain but also that the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation observed in this study may have downstream implications for caregiving behavior.

Two additional studies have examined cognitive reappraisal to negative affective (noninfant) stimuli in primiparous women at approximately 4 months postpartum. Grande et al. (Reference Grande, Olsavsky, Erhart, Dufford, Tribble, Phan and Kim2021) reported that mothers with higher levels of perceived stress evidenced greater activation to negative images in the DLPFC during cognitive reappraisal (as well as decreased activity in the caudate) relative to a condition where mothers were instructed to maintain their emotional response. The authors interpreted this heightened reactivity of the DLPFC to suggest that in highly stressed mothers, emotion regulation may be more effortful or inefficient, or that these mothers may be more reactive to negative emotional stimuli more generally. Interestingly, exploratory analyses in this sample showed that the heightened DLPFC activation in response to negative stimuli during the regulation (versus maintain) condition was also associated with self-reported perceived parenting-specific stress. Although exploratory, this latter finding suggests DLPFC reactivity during emotion regulation tasks may be associated with real-world experiences of parenting.

Building on this prior work, Capistrano et al. (Reference Capistrano, Grande, McRae, Phan and Kim2022) examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage (measured by income to needs ratio) would also be associated with cognitive reappraisal in recently postpartum primiparous women viewing negative affective stimuli. Consistent with their work on perceived stress, they found that mothers with greater socioeconomic disadvantage also evidenced decreased activity in prefrontal cortical regions, including in the SFG (including DLPFC), IFG (including VLPFC), precentral gyrus, MTG, as well as the caudate during the cognitive reappraisal condition. Consequently, heightened stress and socioeconomic disadvantage may shape the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation by affecting prefrontal cortical function. It is also important to note that Capistrano et al. found lower behaviorally observed maternal sensitivity was associated with decreased responding in the precentral gyrus during cognitive reappraisal. Again, evidencing task-based regulatory responses may have implications for caregiving behavior beyond the MRI scanner.

12.4 Limitations and Future Directions

In this chapter, studies relevant to the neurobiology of parenting have been reviewed and their implications for emotion regulation considered. While informative, these studies should be considered in the context of their limitations and directions for future research. Indeed, it is important to note that the studies reviewed here focus on the maternal brain, with overlap as well as divergence reported in the few studies of the paternal brain and responding to infant cues (Feldman, Reference Feldman2015). Indeed, paternal brain changes may be driven more by the experience of caregiving following the arrival of a child (Abraham et al., Reference Abraham, Hendler, Shapira-Lichter, Kanat-Maymon, Zagoory-Sharon and Feldman2014). Nevertheless, a clear path forward requires greater consideration of paternal reactivity and regulation toward infant signals and extending this approach to all birthing and nonbirthing parents. In addition to understanding how different parenting experiences shape the brain, a critical advance in this area is recognizing the need for larger and more diverse samples of parents with respect to race and ethnicity in parental brain research (Penner et al., Reference Penner, Wall, Guan, Huang, Richardson, Dunbar, Groh and Rutherford2023).

Understanding the transition to parenthood inherently requires more longitudinal studies, ideally beginning before conception with repeat assessments during pregnancy (or an equivalent timeframe) and the postpartum period. Hoekzema et al. (Reference Hoekzema, Barba-Müller, Pozzobon, Picado, Lucco, García-García, Soliva, Tobeña, Desco, Crone, Ballesteros, Carmona and Vilarroya2017) have evidenced the value of such a longitudinal approach but more work is needed in this area. Critically, this would be true for both structural and functional neuroimaging research. In particular, there may be value to understanding changes in the maternal brain unfolding prior to birth in pregnant people, which may prompt the identification of risk and protective factors during the transition to parenthood. Indeed the challenges related to maternal emotion regulation may unfold before birth (Penner & Rutherford, Reference Penner and Rutherford2022). For example, how maternal anxiety shapes neural processing of infant faces postpartum is comparable to how maternal anxiety is associated with processing infant faces during pregnancy (Rutherford, Byrne, et al., Reference Rutherford, Byrne, Austin, Lee, Crowley and Mayes2017).

The current chapter has focused on studies of maternal structure and function. As this work continues it will be important to incorporate our understanding of the changing levels of hormones during the transition to parenthood and their implications for the neurobiology of parenting. Oxytocin has been widely implicated in parenting behavior (Feldman & Bakermans-Kranenburg, Reference Feldman and Bakermans-Kranenburg2017), with peripheral levels of oxytocin increasing across the postpartum period in mothers and fathers (e.g. Gordon et al., Reference Gordon, Zagoory-Sharon, Leckman and Feldman2010). A number of studies have examined how administration of oxytocin modulates neural responses to infant cues in parents and nonparents (e.g. Peltola et al., Reference Peltola, Strathearn and Puura2018; Riem et al., Reference Riem, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Pieper, Tops, Boksem, Vermeiren, van Ijzendoorn and Rombouts2011; Rutherford, Guo, et al., Reference Rutherford, Byrne, Austin, Lee, Crowley and Mayes2017) as well as how variation in the oxytocin receptor gene is associated with neural responses to infant stimuli (Peltola et al., Reference Peltola, Yrttiaho, Puura, Proverbio, Mononen, Lehtimäki and Leppänen2014). Of course, oxytocin is not the only hormone that may shape maternal brain responding during the transition to parenthood (Brunton & Russell, Reference Brunton and Russell2008), requiring further extension of this approach to other hormones, including estrogen and progesterone.

Although the literature regarding the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation is in its own infancy, the initial fMRI studies described here are promising in evidencing that explicit emotion regulation strategies modulate reactivity of the maternal brain and that this reactivity is associated with different aspects of caregiving. As this work continues, it will be important to consider the nature of the affective stimuli employed during emotion regulation tasks (i.e. infant versus noninfant stimuli), as well as the generalizability of these tasks to parenting experiences outside of the experimental setting. It may be valuable to include self-report assessments of how parents use different emotion regulation strategies (e.g. Gross & John, Reference Gross and John2003), as well as adapting such measures to parenting-specific contexts. Understanding how regulatory functioning changes throughout the perinatal period would also be valuable, in particular in identifying periods of heightened risk and vulnerability for parents. This would allow a unique opportunity for parental brain researchers to partner with clinicians to both refine therapeutic approaches related to parental emotion regulation and to optimize the timing of these interventions for parents.

12.5 Conclusion

In the current chapter, structural and functional neuroimaging data has been presented that supports the notion that the transition to parenthood may be accompanied by neural reorganization, which may have important implications for caregiving. Meta-analytic work highlights that heightened reactivity to infant cues is particularly evident when parents view photographs of their own infant as well as when infants are expressing distress. Critically, increasing studies are evidencing important associations between maternal brain structure and function and different aspects of parenting to ensure the functional significance of this work is clear. An exciting development in this field are those studies specifically targeting maternal emotion regulation, moving beyond the combined reactivity and regulatory approach typically used. While there has been a strong foundation for studies of the neurobiological basis of the transition to parenthood, advancements are needed in relation to the extension of this work to birthing and nonbirthing parents, incorporating more longitudinal designs, and understanding the role of changing hormonal profiles to neural reorganization. Given only a paucity of research has been conducted to date in the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation, there is significant space for the growth and development of this work, including partnerships with clinicians supporting parents during this transitional period.

In her groundbreaking book, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feelings, Arlie Russell Hochschild (Reference Hochschild1983) described the phenomenon of an organization delineating a set of emotion display rules and pressuring employees to hide their identity in order to comply with them. As Goffman (Reference Goffman1959) had discussed earlier, people play their social roles just like in a drama; and employees, Hochschild noted, follow emotional display rules, showing “appropriate” emotions and refraining from expressing “inappropriate” emotions to control the impression they make on others, maintain relationships, and achieve personal goals (Thoits, Reference Thoits, Manstead, Frijda and Fischer2004; von Scheve, Reference von Scheve2012; Wharton & Erickson, Reference Wharton and Erickson1993). Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) suggested that a similar phenomenon occurs in modern parenting, given the recent culture change in parenting (see Hays, Reference Hays1996): society defines a set of rules for emotion management in parenting and pressures parents to hide their identity in order to conform to these rules and expectations. In this chapter, our goal is to review the literature that supports Lin and colleagues’ study on emotional labor in parenting.

13.1 Modern Parenting

13.2 Emotional Labor Framework

13.2.3 The Emotional Labor Framework in the Work Context

Hochschild’s (Reference Hochschild1983) pioneering work has inspired a great deal of research and theoretical work, resulting in several detailed emotional labor models (Grandey, Reference Grandey2000; Grandey & Melloy, Reference Grandey and Melloy2017; Morris & Feldman, Reference Morris and Feldman1997; Rubin et al., Reference Rubin, Tardino, Daus, Munz, Hartel, Zerbe and Ashkanasy2005; Totterdell & Holman, Reference Totterdell and Holman2003). Despite the differences in these theoretical models, researchers have concurred that emotional labor is a form of emotional management requiring effort from employees and should be positioned within a broader integrative framework. This framework includes (1) emotional demands of work (e.g. Morris & Feldman, Reference Morris and Feldman1996) as an antecedent to emotional dissonance experienced when perceived emotions do not match the demands of the job (e.g. Abraham, Reference Abraham1999; Zerbe, Reference Zerbe2000), causing (2) the employee to make an effort to engage in emotion regulation through deep and surface acting (Bono & Vey, Reference Bono, Vey, Härtel, Zerbe and Ashkanasy2005; Scott & Barnes, Reference Scott and Barnes2011),Footnote ¹ and to produce the desired emotional displays, ultimately leading to (3) consequences for the employee (see Figure 13.1).

Figure 13.1 Emotional labor framework in the job context

13.2.3.1 Emotional Demands of Work: Emotional Display Rules

The cornerstone of all emotional labor models is the view that organizations set emotional display rules that specify which emotions are appropriate and how and when they should be expressed during interactions with customers (Ashforth & Humphrey, Reference Ashforth and Humphrey1993; Cropanzano et al., Reference Cropanzano, Weiss, Elias, Perrewe and Ganster2003; Diefendorff et al., Reference Diefendorff, Richard and Croyle2006; Grandey, Reference Grandey2000; Rafaeli & Sutton, Reference Rafaeli and Sutton1990). Emotional display rules are imposed on employees as early as the recruitment process and are later reinforced by activities such as training, performance appraisal, and supervision (Kruml & Geddes, Reference Kruml and Geddes2000; Sutton & Rafaeli, Reference Sutton and Rafaeli1988). These rules have both a positive aspect, requiring employees to show certain emotions (e.g. “Put a smile on your face!” or “Show interest and excitement!”) and a negative aspect, prohibiting employees from showing certain emotions (e.g. “Don’t raise your voice!” or “Don’t show boredom!”).

Such emotional display rules – requiring employees to conceal negative emotions and express positive emotions – is especially common in customer service work (Wharton & Erickson, Reference Wharton and Erickson1993). The organization sets out these rules based on the assumption that employee behavior influences customer satisfaction and interest in the products or services offered (Grandey et al., Reference Grandey, Fisk, Mattila, Jansen and Sideman2005), and studies have in fact shown this to be true. When employees directly follow the rules and perform the emotional behavior expected by their customers such as greeting, thanking, speaking in a rhythmic voice, smiling, and maintaining eye contact (Grandey, Reference Grandey2003; Tsai, Reference Tsai2001), customers are in a better mood (Luong, Reference Luong2005), buy more, rate the service better, and are more loyal to the organization (Korczynski, Reference Korczynski2005; Pugh, Reference Pugh2001; Tsai, Reference Tsai2001).

13.2.3.2 Emotional Labor and Its Implication for Employee Well-Being

However, what happens when the emotions employees experience are not the same as those they are required to display? Researchers argue that incongruence between the emotions experienced and the expressions expected by the organization induces a negatively affect-laden state of emotional dissonance in employees (Holman et al., Reference Holman, Martinez-Iñigo, Totterdell, Ashkanasy and Cooper2008; Zapf & Holz, Reference Zapf and Holz2006). Jansz and Timmers (Reference Jansz and Timmers2002) point out that the concept of emotional dissonance underlines both the negative nature of this state and its motivational implications. When they experience a feeling of dissonance, employees are motivated to take action to reduce this feeling, which has implications for regulating the emotional process. Undertaking a regulatory effort is vital because emotional dissonance, if prolonged, threatens employees’ mental and physical well-being (Dijk & Brown, Reference Dijk and Brown2006; Hartel et al., Reference Hartel, Hsu, Boyle, Ashkanasy, Zerbe and Hartel2002; Schaubroeck & Jones, Reference Schaubroeck and Jones2000). However, the impact of this regulatory effort may depend on how it is made.

Hochschild (Reference Hochschild1983) followed Goffman’s (Reference Goffman1959) metaphor of different ways of acting in a drama, describing two ways in which employees work to regulate their emotions, that is, two emotional labor strategies: surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting refers to modifying emotional expressions without changing internal feelings. It involves suppressing the display of felt emotions and faking the emotion required by the organization. Deep acting, on the other hand, refers to modifying actual feelings so that they are consistent with the employer’s emotional display rules. It entails an effort to change the felt emotion in order to elicit the appropriate emotional display. As discussed later, the distinction between surface and depth acting is critical in demonstrating and explaining the varying impact of emotional labor on employees’ well-being (see also Grandey, Reference Grandey2000; Grandey & Gabriel, Reference Grandey and Gabriel2015; Grandey & Melloy, Reference Grandey and Melloy2017; Scott & Barnes, Reference Scott and Barnes2011).

Following Hochschild’s (Reference Hochschild1983) description of emotional labor strategies, studies have accumulated evidence that the two forms differ in their effects on employees’ well-being. Most studies have found that surface acting reliably and consistently predicts unfavorable consequences such as worse job performance, less job satisfaction, more psychological stress, more psychosomatic complaints, and more burnout symptoms (Bono & Vey, Reference Bono, Vey, Härtel, Zerbe and Ashkanasy2005; Grandey & Gabriel, Reference Grandey and Gabriel2015; Hülsheger & Schewe, Reference Hülsheger and Schewe2011; Huppertz et al., Reference Huppertz, Ute, Velozo and Schreurs2020; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., Reference Kammeyer-Mueller, Rubenstein, Long, Odio, Buckman, Zhang and Halvorsen-Ganepola2013); however, the findings regarding the effect of deep acting are not as consistent across studies (Grandey, Reference Grandey2000; Grandey & Sayre, Reference Grandey and Sayre2019). Although some studies have shown a damaging effect of deep acting (although it is still thought to be less harmful than surface acting; Mikolajczak et al., Reference Mikolajczak, Menil and Luminet2007), most studies have found that deep acting is neither beneficial nor detrimental (e.g. Brotheridge & Lee, Reference Brotheridge and Lee2002; Hülsheger & Schewe, Reference Hülsheger and Schewe2011).

The concept of “regulatory effort “ further explains the different consequences of surface and deep acting (Huppertz et al., Reference Huppertz, Ute, Velozo and Schreurs2020). Although surface and deep acting are both effortful, the amount of regulatory effort they require differs. In particular, if individuals rely more on surface acting to meet the organization’s rules, their effort and cognitive resources are more strained due to the need to monitor emotional expression constantly. The constant depletion of resources eventually causes tension and strain; if it becomes chronic, it can result in burnout (Brotheridge & Grandey, Reference Brotheridge and Grandey2002). Deep acting also requires cognitive resources to manage emotions, but these efforts are only needed at the beginning; this explains the weaker predictive relationship of deep acting with poor adaptation (see Grandey & Sayre, Reference Grandey and Sayre2019).

13.3 Extending the Emotional Labor Framework to Parenting

13.3.1 Rationale

Does emotional labor also occur in parenting? Hochschild (Reference Hochschild1983) had already foreseen this possibility in her seminal book. She suggested that emotional labor may occur in the professional context and in private life, such as in the family. Hochschild pointed out that of all relationships in the family, emotional labor may be most pronounced in the parent–child relationship, given the strong bond between parents and their children (therefore, more contacts). However, for decades the idea remained at the stage of Hochschild’s early reflections and some pioneering work (see Wharton & Erickson, Reference Wharton and Erickson1993, Reference Wharton and Erickson1995 for how emotional labor may be performed within the family). Research on emotional labor has so far mainly focused on the professional sphere, and the assumption seems fairly widespread that emotional labor is only performed in return for salary, bonuses, or rewards (Grandey & Melloy, Reference Grandey and Melloy2017; Hülsheger & Schewe, Reference Hülsheger and Schewe2011; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., Reference Kammeyer-Mueller, Rubenstein, Long, Odio, Buckman, Zhang and Halvorsen-Ganepola2013; von Scheve, Reference von Scheve2012). However, with recent developments in parenting, this picture is changing (see Section 13.1, Modern Parenting); emotional labor in parenting may have been a long-standing phenomenon that has been ignored because it is a taboo subject. In a pioneering study, however, Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) extended the emotional labor framework to the parenting context (see Figure 13.2).

Figure 13.2 Emotional labor framework in the parenting context

Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) point out that features of contemporary parenting present characteristics of emotional labor. First, the parent–child relationship is one of the closest social relationships (it includes “voice-to-voice,” “face-to-face,” and even “body-to-body” interaction; Bornstein, Reference Bornstein, Bornstein and Leventhal2015). Second, as also briefly summarized in Section 13.1, Modern Parenting, modern parents are now increasingly expected to regulate their emotions during interaction with children. This phenomenon is particularly evident in Western countries, where mothers and fathers are supposed to show positive emotions (e.g. being loving) and maintain patience to be considered ideal parents (Lin et al., Reference Lin, Mikolajczak, Keller, Akgun, Arikan, Aunola, Barham, Besson, Blanchard, Boujut, Brianda, Brytek-Matera, César, Chen, Dorard, dos Santos Elias, Dunsmuir, Egorova, Escobar and Roskam2023). Third, such emotional display rules have been explicitly expressed in government policies such as the Council of Europe’s policy on positive parenting (Rodrigo, Reference Rodrigo2010) or the positive parenting tips recommended by the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (2020), etc. The implementation of these rules is therefore institutionally monitored and controlled. As we have seen, these characteristics are consistent with Hochschild’s (Reference Hochschild1983) observation on the characteristics/determinants of emotional labor in the work context, confirming that the concept is eligible to be applied in parenting.

Given such eligibility, Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) proposed their framework model of “emotional labor in parenting.” As they describe in this framework, society, like an employer, sets explicit rules on emotional expression. And just as employees need to follow emotional display rules to meet organizational expectations and to be recognized as good employees, parents need to follow emotional display rules to meet societal and institutional expectations and to be recognized as parents who are at least good enough (and preferably ideal). As in the work context, these efforts may lead to an immediate beneficial outcome, that is, children may feel positive just as customers do when they observe positive emotional expressions from employees; yet these efforts may eventually jeopardize parental well-being, for example by leading to parental burnout. Together with other studies, the research by Lin and colleagues provides support for their proposal, as described next.

13.3.1.1 Emotional Demands of Parenting: Emotional Display Rules

To begin with, as we saw in Section 13.1, Modern Parenting, social institutions such as governments (e.g. Rodrigo, Reference Rodrigo2010) and media (see Douglas & Michaels, Reference Douglas and Michaels2004) have presented parents with a specific set of emotional display rules. As we might expect, Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) have shown that some parents internalize these rules to the extent that, as shown in a later study, parents think they need to show positive emotions and control their negative emotions in order to be perceived as an ideal parent (Lin et al., Reference Lin, Mikolajczak, Keller, Akgun, Arikan, Aunola, Barham, Besson, Blanchard, Boujut, Brianda, Brytek-Matera, César, Chen, Dorard, dos Santos Elias, Dunsmuir, Egorova, Escobar and Roskam2023). It is true that parents may make efforts to align their expressed emotions with the rules, and that this may indeed result in better parenting strategies (Minnotte et al., Reference Minnotte, Pedersen, Mannon and Kiger2010). Such strategies may eventually benefit children in terms of improving their emotional state (Olszanowski et al., Reference Olszanowski, Wróbel and Hess2020) and subsequent social functioning (e.g. Chen et al., Reference Chen, Haines, Charlton and VanderWeele2019). However, this is only one side of the coin. As discussed next, there is disturbing evidence that parents’ regulatory efforts can also be detrimental to their children’s well-being.

13.3.1.2 Emotional Labor and Its Implication for Parents’ Well-Being

Parental regulatory efforts may be costly for parents, just as emotional labor is costly for employees. Le and Impett’s (Reference Le and Impett2016) pioneering daily diary study found evidence that parents’ efforts to control emotional expression can have a negative impact on their emotional well-being and the parent–child relationship (see also Karnilowicz et al., Reference Karnilowicz, Waters and Mendes2019; Waters et al., Reference Waters, Karnilowicz, West and Mendes2020). Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) went a step further by demonstrating that such efforts (to satisfy emotional display rules) may be so demanding that they put parents at risk of parental burnout, although this depends on how parents make their efforts. Parents are at greater risk of burnout when they prefer surface acting (or expressive suppression; see Lin & Szczygieł, Reference Lin and Szczygieł2022) but are at lower risk when they prefer deep acting (or cognitive reappraisal; Lin et al., Reference Lin and Szczygieł2022). Either way, research has shown that when parental burnout occurs, some parents may become neglectful or violent toward their children (Brianda et al., Reference Brianda, Roskam, Gross, Franssen, Kapala, Gérard and Mikolajczak2020; Mikolajczak et al., Reference Mikolajczak, Brianda, Avalosse and Roskam2018, Reference Mikolajczak, Gross and Roskam2019), and that this maltreatment may eventually compromise children’s development (Cicchetti, Reference Cicchetti2016). It is, therefore, plausible that well-intentioned parental regulatory efforts may have a paradoxical, undesirable effect and work against the child.

13.4 Future Research Directions

As discussed in this chapter, Lin and colleagues (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021), together with other pioneering researchers, provided convincing evidence to support their proposal to adapt the emotional labor framework identified in the work context (see Figure 13.1) to the parenting context (see Figure 13.2). Parents perceive the existence of emotional display rules and put effort into aligning their emotions with those rules through different emotional labor strategies, which ultimately have different consequences (such as different vulnerability to parental burnout). The strengths of this framework are that it provides a backbone connecting society and individuals. It specifically delineates the interplay between society’s rules for emotional expression and parents’ regulatory efforts, emotional responses, and well-being. For this framework to be useful, it should not only contribute to theoretical understanding but also provide direction for future studies. As we will see next, this backbone framework has the potential to open many future research directions in the study of parenting, just as it has contributed to organizational literature.

13.5 Conclusion

The goal of this chapter was to introduce Lin and colleagues’ (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) attempt to adapt emotional labor, originally intended for work, to the parenting context. As they themselves also noted, equating parenting with labor activity is controversial, as parenting does not meet the fundamental characteristic of “labor”: being financially rewarded. With this in mind, Lin and colleagues (p. 2703) pointed out that their import of emotional labor to the parenting context “does not amount to reducing parenting to a job”; rather, it should be seen as a metaphor to describe the situation faced by today’s parents, who are expected to adhere to rules regarding emotions when raising their children.

As we have seen in this chapter, Lin and colleagues’ (Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021) emotional labor framework offers a compelling theoretical lens to explain the mechanism by which desirable goals – to show more positive and demonstrate fewer negative emotions while interacting with children – can be so demanding in terms of emotional labor that they lead to poorer parent–child relationships or even severe costs such as burnout. The emotional labor framework emerged from the need to understand the service industry’s new labor form (Hochschild, Reference Hochschild1983). It has subsequently generated hundreds of studies about the cost of emotion management in service jobs. Although a handful of studies exploring emotional labor in a family context have already emerged (e.g. Wharton & Erickson, Reference Wharton and Erickson1993), there has been little investigation of parents’ regulatory efforts (the main exceptions being Le & Impett, Reference Le and Impett2016 and Lin et al., Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021). Yet these regulatory efforts probably resemble the emotional labor concept very closely in that modern parenting culture places external pressure on parents by prescribing emotional display rules (Lin et al., Reference Lin, Hansotte, Szczygieł, Meeussen, Roskam and Mikolajczak2021). In this sense, this framework contributes to a better understanding of the emotional experience of modern parents.

Managing one’s own emotional reactions when parenting can be one of the most challenging aspects of being a parent. Many parents are depleted, overwhelmed, and triggered by their children’s emotions and may have limited patience and capacity to regulate their reactions in these interactions. The way parents regulate their own emotions influences the emotional climate of the home and determines whether (or not) they will be able to meet their child’s emotional needs in a supportive way. Evidence shows that when parents are not able to regulate their own emotions, it can hinder healthy emotional development in their children (Hajal & Paley, Reference Hajal and Paley2020).

Assisting parents to understand and manage their own emotions has been a central focus of our Tuning in to Kids® (TIK) parenting programs. TIK recognizes that children’s healthy emotional development is partly shaped by how parents manage and express their own emotions (i.e. role modeling, impact on the family emotional climate), how parents react to children’s emotions (validation/invalidation, approval/disapproval and the messages that such reactions provide about emotion expression), and whether they discuss and teach their children about emotions (Eisenberg et al., Reference Eisenberg, Cumberland and Spinrad1998; Morris et al., Reference Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers and Robinson2007). When parents engage in practices of self-care that reduce their own stress and can use emotion regulation (ER) strategies to help remain calm when faced with their children’s emotions, they can more accurately identify children’s emotions and respond in ways that validate the child’s emotional experience. This in turn has been linked to skills in children’s emotion knowledge and regulation. Our studies (e.g. Havighurst et al., Reference Havighurst, Wilson, Harley, Prior and Kehoe2010, Reference Havighurst, Wilson, Harley, Kehoe, Efron and Prior2013, Reference Havighurst, Duncombe, Frankling, Holland, Kehoe and Stargatt2015; Kehoe et al., Reference Kehoe, Havighurst and Harley2020) show that the program improves parent emotion socialization, parent ER and children’s emotional and behavioral functioning in families from community and clinical populations with children ranging in age from toddlers through to teens (for reviews, see Havighurst & Kehoe, Reference Havighurst, Kehoe, Deater-Deckard and Panneton2017; Havighurst et al., Reference Havighurst, Radovini, Hao and Kehoe2020).

In this chapter we begin with relevant definitions and theoretical explanations of ER and briefly describe how adult therapeutic interventions generally target it. We then review parenting interventions and how these enhance parent ER. We unpack different ER strategies and examine how these work, with a focus on comparing “top-down ER” strategies (i.e. cognitive strategies that require a parent to be calmer) with bottom-up strategies (i.e. using the body or senses to regulate emotions that may be more effective when a parent is emotionally activated and has less access to executive functions). We also highlight the importance of self-care in facilitating “proactive ER” and healthy processing of emotions. Following this, we outline how our TIK parenting programs target parent ER.

14.1 Top-Down versus Bottom-Up Emotion Generation and Impact on Emotion Regulation

A variety of interventions exist that promote ER and are usually underpinned by theoretical models about how emotions and ER are conceptualized. We use a definition of emotions as “episodic, relatively short-term, biologically based patterns of perception, experience, physiology, action, and communication that occur in response to specific physical and social challenges and opportunities” (Keltner & Gross, Reference Keltner and Gross1999, p. 467). We distinguish emotions from “mood,” which comprises more prolonged emotional states. We align with a functionalist perspective in which emotions and behaviors are seen to serve a function to promote survival, including social affiliative purposes (e.g. Campos et al., Reference Campos, Mumme, Kermoian and Campos1994; Frijda, Reference Frijda1986).

When emotions occur, they involve changes in body state (e.g. facial expression, posture, muscle tension, heart rate, respiration, etc) and changes in cognitive functioning (e.g. motivation, attention, memory, perception, decision making; Kahneman, Reference Kahneman2011; Smith & Lane, Reference Smith and Lane2015, Reference Smith and Lane2016). Emotions can be elicited in a way that is fast, automatic, and experienced in a very physical way engaging “bottom-up” processes in the brain, like those ranging from unexpected encounters with threat or pain (e.g. seeing a child run toward the road or being kicked by one’s toddler; Kahnemann, Reference Kahneman2011; LeDoux, Reference LeDoux and Aggleton1992). Bottom-up generated emotions are important as they help us to respond quickly and accurately to emotion-relevant aspects of our environment. Top-down elicited emotions can be slower, occurring as a result of cognitive appraisal in a social interaction (e.g. children’s whining can elicit irritation when it is seen as attention seeking or it can elicit curiosity or care when it is seen as connection or help seeking). Whether emotions are elicited via bottom-up or top-down processes has important implications for parenting as well as for determining effective interventions that will appropriately assist parents to regulate their emotions when parenting.

The most common definition of ER is “processes individuals use to influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express emotions” (Gross, Reference Gross1998). ER can “involve generating, maintaining, increasing, or decreasing either positive or negative emotions” (p. 275). Gross suggests a “situation-attention-appraisal-response” sequence of emotion experience, whereby emotions may be generated and regulated at various stages along a timeline of unfolding emotional responding. The model distinguishes between antecedent-focused ER strategies (which include reappraisal, acceptance, problem-solving) and response-focused ER strategies (which include suppression, distraction, rumination, avoidance) (Gross, Reference Gross1998). With the exception of distraction and avoidance, these ER strategies involve cognition, and can therefore be viewed as top-down ER strategies (Kehoe & Havighurst, Reference Kehoe, Havighurst, Beauchaine and Crowell2018). Among these strategies, each can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the context (English et al., Reference English, Lee, John and Gross2017), the goals people have (e.g. to self-regulate, help others, get on with work, keep up appearances) and who is present (e.g. friend or a stranger; English et al., Reference English, Lee, John and Gross2017).

Typically, parent ER requires a combination of bottom-up processing of encounters with emotional experience (e.g. child pushes their sibling or shouts at a parent) along with top-down conceptual knowledge, memories and linguistic representations that guide regulation and behavior (see also Hajal & Paley, Reference Hajal and Paley2020). In any given moment, emotional encounters can be characterized by relatively stronger bottom-up (reactive) or top-down (considered) emotions, which influence both the speed and the intensity of the emotion. This in turn, influences the type of ER strategies (either top-down or bottom-up) that may successfully help parents in such emotional moments. Often, especially at high emotion intensity, ER is automatic and habitual, which means that more practiced strategies (adaptive or maladaptive) are more likely to be used (e.g. Campbell-Sills & Barlow, Reference Campbell-Sills, Barlow and Gross2007; Porges, Reference Porges, Fosha, Siegel and Solomon2009; Thompson, Reference Thompson and Thompson1990; Wylie et al., Reference Wylie, Colasante, De France, Lin and Hollenstein2022). For emotions that were generated in a faster, more bottom-up way, strategies that require breathing or sensory regulation may be more effective than cognitive strategies at lowering arousal (Sheppes & Meiran, Reference Sheppes and Meiran2007; Sheppes et al., Reference Sheppes, Scheibe, Suri and Gross2011; Wylie et al., Reference Wylie, Colasante, De France, Lin and Hollenstein2022). We discuss these strategies in more detail later in this chapter.

14.2 Emotion Regulation and Parenting: Under- and Overregulation Problems

Parenting evokes a variety of emotions, which may be regulated (e.g. healthy emotion expression or masked/unobservable affect) or dysregulated (e.g. excessive emotion expression), and affect parenting behavior (Hajal & Paley, Reference Hajal and Paley2020). Additionally, although parental positive affect is associated with sensitive, supportive parenting (Rueger et al., Reference Rueger, Katz, Risser and Lovejoy2011), parental anger places parents at greater risk of harsh, hostile, or reactive responses to children’s emotions (Ateah & Durrant, Reference Ateah and Durrant2005; Leung & Slep, Reference Leung and Slep2006); parents’ anxiety and worry has been found to be related to more controlling, overprotective, and restrictive parenting (Dix et al., Reference Dix, Gershoff, Meunier and Miller2004; Kaitz & Maytal, Reference Kaitz and Maytal2005); and parental sadness, especially when experienced for prolonged periods of time, can result in parents being more self-focused and detached from children’s goals and needs (Dix et al., Reference Dix, Gershoff, Meunier and Miller2004).

When a parent experiences high intensity emotions such as anger, anxiety, fear, or sadness, these emotional states can be consuming and overwhelming. Although some of these emotions can be adaptive in times of danger or adversity so that parents can act quickly to keep themselves or their children safe, for many these emotions are strongly activated even in more minor situations (e.g. toddler throwing food; child not doing as asked). In part, the fast bottom-up emotion generation may occur due to appraisal of a situation (e.g. “toddler is throwing food to annoy me and won’t listen” versus “throwing food is something most toddlers will do and s/he is still learning”), highlighting the adaptive function that antecedent ER strategies, such as reappraisal hold for parenting (Kehoe & Havighurst, Reference Kehoe, Havighurst, Beauchaine and Crowell2018). When emotions are very intense, however, the resulting physiological aspects of emotion dysregulation can lead to a sense of being flooded with emotions and make it difficult to process information and inhibit maladaptive behaviors and actions (Farb et al., Reference Farb, Anderson, Irving, Segal and Gross2015; LeDoux, Reference LeDoux1998). Thus for many parents emotions come on so quickly that it compromises their ability to use cognitive strategies, emotion acceptance or coping statements (e.g. McRae et al., Reference McRae, Misra, Prasad, Pereira and Gross2012), and increases the likelihood of emotional dysregulation, harsh and ineffective parenting. In these situations, parents require strategies that do not require cognitive regulatory processes but rather employ ER strategies such as breathing, walking, or sensory regulation “in the moment” to prevent them from responding in an unsupportive way (Porges, Reference Porges1995).

Problems with ER are not just about being underregulated with emotions. For parents to be able to respond in a sensitive and attuned way to their children’s emotions, being overregulated or disconnected from emotions can also impair their ability to respond to children in a sensitive way (Baylin, Reference Baylin2017; Hughes & Baylin, Reference Hughes and Baylin2012). There are a variety of reasons why this might occur, including temperament (high inhibition); neurodiversity (e.g. autistic spectrum); that their socialization, culture, and family background has accentuated high levels of control or suppression; or that life experiences have included prolonged periods of stress or trauma where emotional detachment has been a learned pattern of coping (Hughes & Baylin, Reference Hughes and Baylin2012). Thus, overregulation or detachment from emotions affects both parents’ ability to be in touch with their own emotions and also their ability to reflect on their child’s internal world and successfully identify and empathize with child’s emotions.

There are, however, times when suppression (if used momentarily and not exclusively) is necessary and adaptive when parenting (Wylie et al., Reference Wylie, Colasante, De France, Lin and Hollenstein2022). Managing anger when one’s children are fighting by breathing slowly or use of self-talk to inhibit sharing one’s fears when a child is giving a musical performance can suppress expression in order to achieve one’s goals (help the children resolve conflict or support the child to manage performance anxiety). Parenting interventions that target ER may be most effective when they incorporate a range of different strategies that address parents unique challenges with ER. We now review some of the dominant therapy models that target adult ER.

14.3 Therapeutic Approaches that Target Emotion Regulation: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies

Many therapies targeting ER or dysregulation work from a “top-down” model, where cognitions are used to change emotions and behaviors. Although some incorporate breathing and relaxation as central components (considered a more “bottom-up strategy”), primarily top-down models use cognitive strategies for ER such as reappraisal, reframing, distancing, and distraction, or behavioral strategies such as exposure with response prevention to achieve extinction. Here we briefly review well known therapies and how these work.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), one of the most commonly used therapies, focuses on teaching skills to reduce aversive emotional states through behavioral techniques (e.g. breathing and relaxation strategies, scheduling pleasant events, encouraging use of behavioral hierarchies to face feared situations, and use of breathing/relaxation), and cognitive strategies (e.g. self-monitoring, cognitive restructuring, reframing, reattribution, coping skills). Mindfulness interventions also target ER using both top-down (targeting thinking) and bottom-up (focusing on breathing or the senses) strategies. A core assumption of mindfulness therapies is that psychological problems occur when people become overly caught up in thinking about the past or the future, both of which interfere with effective responding in the present (Kabat-Zinn, Reference Kabat-Zinn2003; Segal et al., Reference Segal, Williams and Teasdale2002). Shifting attention to the present and remaining nonjudgmental through use of top-down and bottom-up strategies improves insight and adaptive ER (Chambers et al., Reference Chambers, Gullone and Allen2009; Kabat-Zinn, Reference Kabat-Zinn1982; Segal et al., Reference Segal, Williams and Teasdale2002).

More recent “third-wave” behavioral and cognitive therapies also target ER. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes & Wilson, Reference Hayes and Wilson1994), combines mindfulness techniques with CBT skills to alter patterns of dysfunctional behavior. ACT helps clients accept and tolerate negative emotions rather than avoid or extinguish them as in traditional CBT. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT; Paivio & Greenberg, Reference Paivio and Greenberg2001) specifically addresses aspects of emotional processing in therapy, namely, to be aware of, accept, express, and regulate emotions and to differentiate adaptive from maladaptive emotional reactions. Therapists guide clients toward emotions, exploring early experience, memories, and images that shape “emotional schemes.” Emotional schemes contribute to automatic emotional responses in a similar way that core maladaptive schemas determine dysfunctional patterns of thinking or behaving. Additionally, EFT recognizes two different pathways for producing emotions, one fast and automated, involving brainstem and gut responses, and the other slow, involving the neocortex in appraisal (Cozolino, Reference Cozolino2010; LeDoux, Reference LeDoux1998). Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT; Linehan, Reference Linehan1993) views dysregulated emotional responses as driven by distorted perception and dysfunctional thinking and also by automatic unconscious responses, such as biochemical changes, physiological changes, and action tendencies that can occur prior to distorted cognitions (see Neacsiu et al., Reference Neacsiu, Bohus, Linehan and Gross2015). Four primary skill sets are taught in DBT that assist in reducing emotion dysregulation: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, ER, and distress tolerance. DBT focuses on proactive ER whereby clients learn skills in how to engage in self-care and actions that are self-soothing (such as paying attention to the senses). Distress tolerance skills are taught to assist in high-risk emotional situations which include sitting with emotions until they lessen, using mindfulness techniques, using STOP skills (Stop, Take a step back, Observe the situation, and Proceed effectively), and using bottom-up ER TIP skills (change body temperature, engage in intense physical exercise, and progressive muscle relaxation). Learning to tolerate emotions using these skills also assists the individual in working through their emotions rather than suppression, which often has less adaptive outcomes.

Bottom-up therapies work more specifically with somatic and emotional processes to change emotions, behaviors, and cognitions. Sensorimotor psychotherapy (Ogden et al., Reference Ogden, Minton and Pain2006) is a body-oriented therapy based on attachment theory, using techniques drawn from CBT and psychodynamic psychotherapy to assist (1) becoming aware of automatic maladaptive action tendencies, (2) learning to inhibit initial impulses, (3) experimenting with alternative actions in order to complete the “frozen actions” (e.g. fight or flight response) that were unable to be used during the trauma experience, and (4) practicing alternative and effective actions (Ogden et al., Reference Ogden, Minton and Pain2006). Treatment integrates top-down strategies including psychoeducation about trauma, mindfulness, and concentration practice with bottom-up therapies including development of somatic resources for regulating arousal. Yoga therapy is another body-oriented approach to help with physiological self-regulation that may alleviate distress through an integration of top-down and bottom-up processes that facilitate bidirectional communication between the mind and the body (Sullivan et al., Reference Sullivan, Erb, Schmalzl, Moonaz, Noggle Taylor and Porges2018). Reviews of studies find that yoga breathing, physical postures that require building distress tolerance, and meditation, lower posttraumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder symptoms in clinical participants including survivors of child abuse and interpersonal violence (Longacre et al., Reference Longacre, Silver-Highfield, Lama and Grodin2012; Telles et al., Reference Telles, Singh and Balkrishna2012). Yoga may be used in combination with exposure therapy, mindfulness, medication, or psychotherapy to achieve greater symptom reduction than those therapies alone (da Silva et al., Reference da Silva, Ravindran and Ravindran2009; Telles et al., Reference Telles, Singh and Balkrishna2012). Yoga adds a bottom-up approach to managing emotions that is often missing in other therapies, perhaps because body-oriented therapies are not a part of the professional training or clinical expertise of psychologists.

14.4 Parent Emotion Regulation Interventions

Many of the therapies described here and their underpinning theories have influenced parenting programs that help parents to understand and manage emotions and respond sensitively and supportively with their children. Increasingly there is a focus on parenting interventions underpinned by emotion socialization, attachment, reflective functioning, and mindfulness theories that also include a focus on parent ER. Recent reviews of emotion-focused parenting interventions have highlighted the efficacy of such programs in improving parent emotional functioning, parenting, parent–child relationships, and child outcomes (Hajal & Paley, Reference Hajal and Paley2020; Havighurst et al., Reference Havighurst, Radovini, Hao and Kehoe2020; Jugovac et al., Reference Jugovac, O’Kearney, Hawes and Pasalich2022). Research has highlighted that emotion-focused programs may be especially important for families in which parents or children struggle with impulse control, mental health difficulties, or attachment problems (see Maliken & Katz, Reference Maliken and Katz2013; Scott & Dadds, Reference Scott and Dadds2009). Additionally, emotion dysregulation has been related to lower attendance and higher dropout in evaluation trials of parenting programs and to interfere with skill acquisition as well as skill implementation (Maliken & Katz, Reference Maliken and Katz2013; Zubrick et al., Reference Zubrick, Ward, Silburn, Lawrence, Williams, Blair, Robertson and Sanders2005). We briefly describe some of the key parenting frameworks here that focus on parent ER, before describing our work with TIK.

There are now a number of programs that focus specifically on helping parents manage emotions in the context of parenting. Katz and colleagues (Reference Katz, Gurtovenko, Maliken, Stettler, Kawamura and Fladeboe2020) designed a parenting intervention for mothers who had experienced intimate partner violence. A considerable portion of the early part of their 12-session program focused on building mothers’ emotion awareness and ER skills. This was viewed as essential for learning emotion coaching and to work through the memories and sequala of trauma. Similarly, the Let’s Connect program teaches caregivers’ social and emotional skills as a way of improving connection with the child, in a program working with families who have experienced trauma (Shaffer et al., Reference Shaffer, Fitzgerald, Shipman and Torres2019). Tuning Relationships with Music (TRM; Colegrove et al., Reference Colegrove, Havighurst, Kehoe and Jacobsen2018), a music therapy program delivered individually to parent–adolescent dyads, was designed to address the cognitive, emotional, neurobiological (autonomic), and relational challenges for parents with a childhood interpersonal trauma history and their adolescent children. TRM provides resources and teaches skills to improve cognitive functioning (e.g. psychoeducation about beliefs and attributions that support emotional competence), ER (e.g. musical exercises to support emotion awareness and responsiveness for parent and adolescent; emotion coaching to assist the parent in helping their adolescent regulate emotions), autonomic regulation (e.g. music that supports diaphragmatic breathing) and relational functioning (e.g. musical exercises that teach parents to turn toward and connect with their adolescent) in order to support responsive and non-reactive communication during conflict.

Programs based on attachment theory often include helping a parent to understand their own emotional reactions to their child to facilitate sensitive and responsive caregiving. Circle of Security, a widely disseminated parenting program, uses the analogy of “shark music” to help parents recognize uncomfortable feelings about their past that influence the way they respond to their child (Hoffman et al., Reference Hoffman, Marvin, Cooper and Powell2006). This awareness results in providing parents with the capacity to alter their emotional reactions, which is an important prerequisite for being able to regulate emotions. Although the program does not overtly teach ER skills, it promotes top-down ER strategies, because it results in greater insight, emotion acceptance and self-awareness that results in lowered emotion reactivity.

Reflective functioning and mentalization are also increasingly used in working with parents where there are attachment difficulties with the child. Reflective functioning refers to a parent’s ability to reflect on their own as well as their child’s internal states and is regarded as a central component contributing to secure attachment in children (Ensink et al., Reference Ensink, Maheux, Normandin, Sabourin, Diguer, Berthelot and Parent2013; Fonagy et al., Reference Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist and Target2002). Interventions that focus on enhancing parental reflective functioning teach parents to understand their child’s motivations and needs rather than just responding to their behavior (Slade, Reference Slade2007). They help parents to become aware of their own internal motivations, thoughts, and feelings and how these are separate from their child’s. This awareness (using different therapeutic approaches) helps parents to regulate their reactions and learn new ways of responding to their child. A range of programs exist that focus on reflective functioning and mentalization (for a review, see Havighurst et al., Reference Havighurst, Radovini, Hao and Kehoe2020).

Finally, mindfulness parenting interventions have been found to be successful in improving parent ER and facilitating more sensitive caregiving (e.g. Bögels et al., Reference Bögels, Lehtonen and Restifo2010; Duncan et al., Reference Duncan, Coatsworth and Greenberg2009; Lippold et al., Reference Lippold, Duncan, Coatsworth, Nix and Greenberg2015). Duncan et al. (Reference Duncan, Coatsworth and Greenberg2009) proposed a number of key components of mindfulness parenting programs that benefit parenting via how they affect parent’s own ER. These include nonjudgmental acceptance of oneself and the child, emotion awareness of self and child, self-regulation to reduce over-reactiveness, and compassion. Decentering includes pausing before reacting and shifting judgment by using self-talk such as “feelings are just feelings.” Mindfulness parenting programs use bottom-up strategies that include paying attention to the breath and bodily sensations, as well as top-down cognitive processes where beliefs are shifted to reduce reactiveness.

14.5 How Does Tuning in to Kids Focus on Emotion Regulation with Parents

In this section we outline the ways in which the TIK programs (including a version for parents of toddlers, parents of teens, and fathers) target parent ER. Although the primary focus of the programs is on developing parents’ capacity to emotion coach their children (with helping the child usually the main motivation for program attendance), TIK also focuses on parent ER because it is so central to parents’ ability to use emotion coaching and because it affects many other aspects of parent, family, and child functioning. We use four main approaches for improving parents’ abilities to regulate emotions: (1) teaching skills in emotion awareness and understanding; (2) exploring factors that contribute to parent emotion competence (including social and cultural influences, family-of-origin effects on emotion competence and meta-emotion philosophy, that is, understanding one’s own beliefs and automatic reactions to emotions); (3) teaching skills in ER, including proactive strategies to reduce stress and emotional arousal, bottom-up strategies for “in the moment” activation, and top-down strategies that include shifting beliefs about emotions; and (4) teaching parents emotion coaching to reduce parent and child emotion dysregulation.

14.6 Teaching Skills in Emotion Awareness and Understanding

Emotion awareness includes the capacity to notice and accurately identify one’s own and other’s emotions (Saarni, Reference Saarni1999). From early in life, children are primed to notice emotions and develop emotional literacy, being able to recognize, name, and understand their own and other’s emotions. Depending on the child’s own capacities and their experiences as they grow, children will vary in the development of these skills (Saarni, Reference Saarni1999). Emotional understanding plays an important role in social-emotional well-being and influences how emotions are regulated. In parents, there are substantial differences in these skills because of their childhood socialization experiences with emotions as well as their own temperament. Many parents have limited emotion awareness or emotion literacy and this can make it more difficult for them to teach their children about emotions and use emotion coaching (Havighurst & Kehoe, Reference Havighurst, Kehoe, Deater-Deckard and Panneton2017).

Learning skills in emotion awareness are threaded throughout the TIK program, beginning with helping parents with awareness of their own emotions, while also helping parents to recognize emotions underpinning children’s verbal statements, behaviors, and reactions to different situations. Specifically, TIK helps parents identify their children’s emotions by attending to facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice or by thinking of similar adult equivalent situations and reflecting on how they might feel (e.g. starting preschool may be like starting a new job). At the end of the first TIK session, parents are encouraged to begin noticing emotions more in their lives, including in themselves, their child and others. In session 2, parents begin the session with an activity about emotion awareness (the Bears exercise) where they choose a picture from a set of bears showing different emotional expressions that represent an emotion the parent has experienced during the last week. This is followed by answering a set of questions (i.e. What is the emotion? What was the situation? Where did you feel this emotion in your body? What thoughts went through your head? How did you feel about having this emotion?). These questions are designed to provide parents with ways to identify, name, and express how they felt, including linking an emotion experience to bodily sensations and thoughts as well as becoming aware of how one feels about having this feeling (i.e. identifying a meta-emotion belief about that emotion). Parents are encouraged to use these questions throughout day-to-day life when they experience emotions.

There are a number of other ways that TIK builds parents’ skills in emotion awareness. For example, through discussions after watching video examples or by engaging in role plays of parent–child interactions where parents are encouraged to identify and name the emotions of the parent and child. Parents are also taught to recognize feelings behind their child’s emotions and behavior using the “iceberg” metaphor to differentiate surface (irritability or withdrawal) versus deeper levels of emotional experience (e.g. disappointment, rejection, powerlessness, fear). Emotion word lists help parents to build greater complexity in language to differentiate and express emotions and feeling faces posters (that are ostensibly for children but often useful for parents) assist them to link emotion identification, facial expressions, and experiences to facilitate emotional competence. This process connects cognition and language to help with processing emotions, consistent with the mechanisms by which emotion-focused therapy works where putting words to felt experiences allows emotion to be processed rather than remaining unresolved (Greenberg & Pascual-Leone, Reference Greenberg and Pascual-Leone2006; Johnson & Lee, Reference Johnson, Lee and Bailey2000).

In TIK we also recognize that helping parents to become aware of and name children’s emotions (Steps 1 and 4 of emotion coaching) provides them with an anchor for present-moment-awareness, not unlike focusing the breath in mindfulness (Hill & Updegraff, Reference Hill and Updegraff2012). This enables parents to modify dysfunctional processes of suppressing emotions or becoming emotionally reactive and increases awareness of how they and their child are feeling. Parents’ report being calmer when attempting to identify emotions, being more present with their children when they are emotional and feeling more empathy for their children. This also assists parents to manage their automatic unsupportive reactions to children’s emotions thereby enabling alternative responses to be enacted (Bargh & Ferguson, Reference Bargh and Ferguson2000; Dumas, Reference Dumas2005).

14.7 Exploring Factors that Contribute to Parent Emotion Regulation

Gottman et al. (Reference Gottman, Katz and Hooven1996) outlined a theory of meta-emotion philosophy (MEP; thoughts and feelings about emotions) that determined parents’ responses to their children’s emotions. MEP is influenced by a range of factors including social, cultural, and family of origin experiences surrounding emotions (the messages received, verbally and nonverbally about expression) that shape socially proscribed ways of reacting to emotions (such as how grief is expressed at a funeral; whether anger is expressed overtly when another person has infringed an individual’s rights). In TIK we focus on shifting parents’ attitudes about emotions toward acceptance, noting that all emotions are acceptable and serve important functions of survival. This is differentiated from behavior, where not all behaviors (i.e. yelling at and hitting a child when angry) are acceptable or constructive in relationships and parenting. This distinction is also an example of the third wave of CBT, where emotions are accepted and validated as a mechanism for change, rather than altering thinking or behavior to alter emotions. This is often a challenging idea for parents who may hold strong negative attitudes about emotions and their expression (e.g. it is not okay to hate; jealousy is bad; anxiety is debilitating).

Emotion acceptance and learning ways to manage the discomfort that intense emotional arousal brings involves developing awareness of meta-emotions and automatic reactions. Parental automatic reactions occur often seemingly instantaneously, without conscious awareness in response to triggers (either memories, experiences or events), a bottom-up emotion generation. These might be when the individual is faced with an immediate threat to safety (or the safety of others), in specific situations (e.g. bedtimes or mealtimes if these were stressful when the parent was a child), with specific emotions (e.g. child or friend is sobbing unconsolably), or when their child engages in behaviors that the parent may have history with (e.g. lashes out at their sibling hurting them, or when their child reports they were not picked for a team at school). Automatic reactions are linked to the situational context (including memories of these from childhood), the type of emotion and their valence and often result in emotionally dysregulated responses that may have been adaptive during childhood but do not match or are no longer appropriate in the current context. For parents, for example, automatic reactions can show up as excessive anger in response to a child’s misbehavior, defensive retaliation in response to a child’s accusations of being unfair, disapproval and withdrawal in response to a child being jealous and harsh with a sibling, or embarrassment and criticalness when the child has a tantrum in front of grandparents. Automatic reactions can also include automatically dismissing the child’s emotions with the aim of regaining control or wanting the emotion to go away (e.g. use of disapproving or minimising, or laisse faire parental responses to the child). In this context, teaching parents’ ER skills is often ineffective because when activated in this way, they do not have access to optimal executive functioning and ER responses are less likely to occur.

Helping parents develop an awareness of their MEP, the influence of their family of origin experiences, and understanding their automatic reactions to emotions are critical in altering habitual, dysfunctional patterns of responding to emotions. This process is similar to schema-focused or emotion-focused psychotherapy in which changes occur by accessing past experiences and evoking emotions consistent with these memories in order to work through and alter automatic dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and interacting (Greenberg & Safran, Reference Greenberg and Safran1989). Intense automatic reactions are reduced because emotions no longer activate (often unconsciously) remembered past emotional experiences (Greenberg & Pascual-Leone, Reference Greenberg and Pascual-Leone2006; Lane et al., Reference Lane, Ryan, Nadel and Greenberg2015). Further, reflecting on the effect of dysfunctional family of origin experiences, while also learning new skills in parenting, has been found necessary for altering intergenerational patterns of neglectful parenting (Leerkes & Crockenberg, Reference Leerkes and Crockenberg2006).

Across the program, automatic reactions and family of origin (FOO) experiences are progressively explored so that defenses, retraumatizing or withdrawal responses are less likely to occur. Session 1 introduces parents to the basic premise of meta-emotion and that it is shaped by FOO, culture, and experiences. Session 2 builds on this by exploring the messages about emotion expression received from the wider culture. Session 3 explores family of origin experiences with sadness (how did your mother/father respond to you when you were sad; how did they show sadness; what were the messages that others gave you about sadness and expressing it, etc.). Session 4 explores FOO with fears and worries. Session 5 focuses on anger and session 6, on how conflict was responded to or is used as an opportunity for each parent to summarize what they have learned about their automatic reactions. In clinical settings the program is delivered over a longer duration enabling these issues to be explored gradually and sensitively, depending on parents’ capacity for reflection and self-disclosure, and accounting for difficult FOO experiences, past trauma, and current mental health. The graduated exploration of FOO and automatic reactions has resulted in many parents reporting shifts when they made the “light-bulb”-like connections between how their own mother or father responded with anger to them as a child and their automatic reactions as an adult to anger in close relationships or parenting. In turn, they will often report that they can now identify their own emotion dysregulation patterns, and this enables them to engage in and use skills taught in emotion regulation.

14.8 Teaching Emotion Regulation Skills: Proactive, Top-Down, and Bottom-Up Strategies

In TIK we teach three ways of regulating emotions: pausing, calming, and releasing. We also teach strategies parents can use proactively (i.e. self-care) and “in the moment,” with a specific focus on regulating anger, anxiety, and stress. We highlight that bottom-up ER strategies may work better in the moment, when emotions are generated automatically, fast and are high in intensity with the most frequently used skill to “build in a pause.” Building in a pause includes slow deep breaths, a cold drink of water, stepping outside or going to the bathroom, stretching, shifting the weight from one foot to the other, holding a necklace or keys to connect or ground to the senses and the present moment, counting to 10 in one’s head, or moving around. These activities require 10–30 seconds to reduce a parent’s arousal and inhibit their automatic reactions, instead enabling selection of more optional ER and parenting responses. Bottom-up strategies do not require cognitive ER skills such as attention-shifting or reframing that are often inaccessible to parents at times of heightened emotion. Strategies to build in a pause that are not cognitive are also more effective for parents who can be abusive when they are emotionally dysregulated.

Building in a pause allows parents to widen the gap between the emotionally activating situation and their response, reducing the likelihood of dysfunctional, unsupportive parenting. This also enables the parent to be more child centered, to engage their capacity for reflective functioning by considering the child’s internal world (Fonagy et al., Reference Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist and Target2002), and then to use emotion coaching skills. Although in some respects building in a pause may entail momentary emotion suppression (e.g. telling yourself to stop) or distraction (e.g. counting, or focusing on one’s senses) we believe that this remains adaptive in the context of parenting, especially if followed by other strategies.

For regulating emotion in advance, we encourage proactive “emotional refueling” using both top-down (e.g. reflection) as well as bottom-up strategies to process emotions and prepare for future emotional moments. In contrast to avoidance or distraction behaviors, proactive ER includes “things one does before the emotion response tendencies have become fully activated and have changed one’s behaviour and one’s peripheral physiological responding” (Gross & Thompson, Reference Gross, Thompson and Gross2007, p. 15). Proactive skills assist with emotion arousal reduction and include teaching breathing techniques (a range of options are taught or links to different resources that enable parents to find preferable methods), meditation, self-care activities that are calming (a hot bath, a walk in nature, taking off one’s shoes to walk on the grass and feel the texture under one’s feet) as well as physical activity to “let off steam” and reduce the physiological arousal that comes with emotion activation and stress (e.g. going for a run, walk or bike ride, kicking a ball, or weeding the garden). Parents are taught about the flight, flight, and freeze response and encouraged to find ways to manage these reactions and the activation that often ensues. Stress-reduction activities such as tense and release are also an effective component of CBT (Beck et al., Reference Beck, Rush, Shaw and Emery1979; Hawton et al., Reference Hawton, Salkovskis, Kirk and Clark1989).

TIK does not directly teach cognitive or top-down strategies that are often the main components of adult-focused ER programs; however, many of the exercises, discussions and skills result in new experiences that can shift parents’ beliefs about emotions. For example, through exploring the function of emotions and meta-emotion, and gaining a more accurate understanding of children’s emotional development, change can occur in parents’ beliefs about emotions and help them to be less judgmental. Parents learn to reappraise emotional situations as emotion coaching opportunities, times for connection and teaching, which often reflects a change in beliefs about emotions.

Individual tailoring of program delivery based on parents’ challenges enables a targeted focus on areas of parent ER difficulties. Sometimes there is the need to introduce self-care earlier for very stressed or overwhelmed parents; sometimes parents dislike the focus on meditation and alternative exercises are needed; at other times when parents are more reactive, techniques to build in a pause are required earlier; or FOO is playing a very dominant role in preventing a parent from being able to take their child’s perspective, and so more work on this is needed in the later sessions. Lastly, the program normalizes ER difficulties, with the message that parenting is often a very challenging experience for many parents. Facilitators often share in a planned and limited way, personal experiences that illustrate their own challenges and learning surrounding ER. This process reduces again the “power” of expert/learner that can often result in parents feeling deskilled and devalued as a person and as a parent.

14.9 Teaching Parents Emotion Coaching to Assist with Emotion Regulation

The parenting skills taught in TIK for parents to use with their children also often assist parents in ER. Although emotion coaching is a way of responding that allows parents to coregulate their child, teaching the five steps of emotion coaching can act as an ER strategy for parents because it provides them with a model of how to work through emotional experiences. This alters their automatic reactions and shifts the attributions parents make when their children are emotional. Emotion coaching involves five main steps: (1) noticing the child’s emotion (which assists parents to be present in the moment); (2) seeing this as an opportunity to connect and guide/teach the child (a reappraisal of the situation); (3) communicating understanding and empathy; (4) helping the child to understand and name the emotion; and (5) if necessary, assist the child with problem-solving and/or setting limits around their behavior. By increasing parents’ awareness of their emotionally dismissive responses that create less optimal emotional competence, parents instead learn skills in how to use the emotion coaching steps with their children when emotions occur. For example, rather than viewing the child as being attention seeking, manipulative, or weak, use of the five steps helps the parent see their child’s emotions as an opportunity to connect with them and support them with emotions. Where the former reactions might activate a parent to irritability, anger, and an emotionally dismissive parenting response, the latter (where emotion coaching is used) results in increased empathy and less emotional reactivity in the parent.

Further, using the analogy of “the iceberg” parents are encouraged to notice (step 1) and explore emotions that underlie surface emotions (e.g. jealousy or fear behind anger) and behaviors (sadness, loneliness, or fear behind whining or oppositionality) and rather than withdrawing attention at these times, connection is encouraged and guidance is provided to the child to understand and regulate their emotions (step 2). Exploring deeper emotion (such as fears of separation, abandonment, rejection, failure, loss) that often drive surface level emotions and behaviors, significantly assists the child but also acts as a regulation strategy for the parent. Some parents will report that the act of enquiry when using the five steps shifts their focus and helps them to calm their own arousal levels as well.

Building parents capacity to communicate empathy (step 3) with their children is a key component of TIK. Empathy requires a parent to be regulated. In order to take the perspective of another (cognitive aspects of empathy) and “feel with” that person (the emotional aspects of empathy), a parent needs to shift their focus to their child’s mental and emotional state. We teach a stepped strategy called “The Emotion Detective” for helping parents to empathize, where parents ask themselves some reflective questions when their child experiences emotions (such as not being picked for a team; the birth of a sibling; being made to eat a least favorite food) and to (1) consider an adult equivalent situation (e.g. not getting a desired job; one’s partner bringing home a new girl/boyfriend to be part of the family; being made to do something at work that one disagrees with); then (2) imagine the emotions the parent might feel in that “adult equivalent” situation; and lastly (3) communicating understanding and acceptance by practicing an empathic response (e.g. how disappointing; I’d feel jealous and left out too; that’s annoying when you are made to do things you don’t like). The skills learned in this exercise are then promoted for use by the parent whenever their child becomes emotional. This gives parents a strategy that also helps them regulate their reactions and shifts their perspective from being adult centered to child centered. The theory of mentalization and reflective functioning is useful to understand this process where the parent is able to consider their child’s internal emotional world (Fonagy et al., Reference Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist and Target2002). This functions as a regulation strategy for the parent and is usually helpful in calming the child. It also builds connection and closeness that reinforces the parents’ efforts, validating their actions and strengthening their confidence that they are able to support and guide their child. This results in shifts in their beliefs from being overwhelmed (I can’t cope with my child’s emotions; this child is so difficult) to having greater competence in parenting about emotions (I can manage my reactions; I can guide my child), and in turn contributes to parents being better able to regulate their own emotions.

The fourth step of naming emotions with children (step 4) also assists parents in their emotion awareness and regulation. Finally, a number of strategies are taught that provide parents with ways of assisting their child to regulate emotions (e.g. slow breathing, tense and release exercises, bringing attention to the senses, use of a special object to hold and feel the texture). These same skills are often useful for parents to assist them in their own ER.

14.10 Conclusion

Assisting parents to develop skills in regulating their emotions in the context of parenting, especially in ways that are supportive of the child’s emotion socialization, is central to emotion-focused parent work. Parenting has a significant emotional load and parents are often limited in what they have left for managing their own emotions. Part of parent work is finding ways to overcome the barriers to parents investing time and energy into efforts to address their own wellbeing. From our experiences with TIK programs and over 20 years of delivery of this suite of programs, we have refined ways of supporting parents to learn ER strategies as interwoven components in the parenting program so that defensiveness and barriers can be overcome. We combine a focus on increasing parent emotion awareness, exploration of factors that contribute to parent meta-emotion philosophy, proactive, bottom-up and top-down ER strategies and teaching emotion coaching skills for parents to use with their children that anchor them to a more child-centered approach to parenting and have benefits for parents as well. What works for parents depends on their own temperament, their family history with emotions and past experiences, as well as the context in which emotions occur and the intensity of the emotion. Parents also vary in what they find useful and effective, and a range of strategies enables individual preference and choice, ensuring parents feel more empowered to determine how they will parent and the choices they make. Many of the methods that we use are consistent with other theoretical approaches to adult ER interventions as well as parenting programs that have an emotion-focused or mindfulness approach. Although TIK programs often result in shifts in parent cognitive processes that aid in ER, this is not the primary approach used. Greater integration of bottom-up or body-focused strategies that assist in regulating emotions have been effective for many parents when responding to emotions in themselves and their children and illustrate the shifting theoretical and empirical state of knowledge about how to promote ER in the context of parenting.

Our goal in this book has been to highlight the importance of emotion regulation in the context of parenting. This book, the first on emotion regulation and parenting, both highlights the importance of emotion regulation in the specific context of parenting and shows how promising research at the intersection of these two fields is. With the help of the many wonderful experts who contributed to the chapters, this book allows us to (1) take stock of findings and trends in the field, (2) identify the main challenges to be addressed, and (3) pinpoint exciting directions and methods for future research. We address each of these in turn.

C.1 Emotion Regulation and Parenting

Research at the intersection of emotion regulation and parenting often seems to be studying different facets of this complex phenomenon. Some researchers focus on the parent’s emotion regulation, others on the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions, and still others on the role played by the parent’s and/or the child’s emotion regulation in the child’s development. One of the first challenges is to bring these different perspectives together.

At the outset of the book, the author of Chapter 1 offers an overview of the complexity of the field of research devoted to parenting cognitions and behaviors in relation to child development. Then, the authors of Chapter 2 point out the different facets of emotion regulation, the complexity of the process, and especially the fact that all its facets are worth studying in the field of parenting. It is clear from these two chapters that these two fields have developed independently, with their own complexity and issues. It will be of great interest and value to link them together. So how can we summarize what emotion regulation in parenting is?

First, emotion regulation in parenting is concerned with how parents regulate their own emotions as individuals. As highlighted in several chapters of the book, there is considerable interindividual variability in this respect due to genetic, hormonal, and neural factors (see Chapter 12), sociodemographic factors such as age or gender, primiparity, the developmental history of the individual including history of maltreatment (see Chapter 4), internal working models, personality, etc. The way in which parents regulate their own emotions as individuals is a key factor in parents’ well-being, stress, and behavior in general. In part, this is because the way in which parents regulate their emotions as individuals is an explanatory factor in the child’s emotional development via modeling (i.e. observation and imitation) (see Chapters 2, 7, and 9).

Second, emotion regulation in parenting concerns how parents regulate their own emotions within the specific context of parenting. On the one hand, parents must regulate the emotions that parenting brings in general. For example, they may feel fulfillment or pride in the role of mother or father or disappointment and disinterest. On the other hand, parents must also regulate the emotions they feel when interacting with the child. These emotions are specific to each interaction and fluctuate from moment to moment and from one context to another. For example, the parent may want to reduce the expression of anxiety on the teen’s first night out. The way in which the parent regulates their own emotions in the specific context of parenting is an explanatory factor in the parent’s well-being, stress, and burnout (see Chapter 6) and in their behavior as a parent (see Chapters 3 and 5).

Third, emotion regulation in parenting concerns how parents regulate the child’s emotions (i.e. reactions to child emotions, conversations and teaching about emotions) during parent–child interactions (see Chapters 7 and 8). Here too there is considerable interindividual variability. The way in which parents regulate the child’s emotions is the result of the two previous points, that is, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in general, and the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in the specific context of parenting. It also results from the parent’s meta-emotion philosophy (see Chapter 8). This is the parent effect. To this effect is added the child effect. The way the parent regulates the child’s emotions is influenced by the child’s temperament, behavior in specific situations, age, and other characteristics such as a disability. There also may be interaction effects, meaning that the impact of the parent effects depends on the characteristics of the child. As an additional complexity, there is also an effect of the context in which the interaction occurs. For example, the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions may differ depending on whether regulation occurs in the family or in a public setting (see Chapter 1). A parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions also differs according to culture (see Chapter 10). The way in which the parent regulates the child’s emotions through their practices and reactions matters, as it influences the child’s social and emotional development (see Chapters 2, 7, and 9).

C.2 Challenges to Be Addressed

Without diminishing the work already accomplished by researchers in the field, it is clear that there are still many unexplored areas and that the field is struggling to progress in a coherent manner in all three directions (i.e. the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in general, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in the specific context of parenting, and the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions). Taken together, the chapters that make up this book suggest that our field needs to address several main challenges.

One challenge is that there is a great imbalance between the three elements that the field of emotion regulation in parenting entails. Of the three, the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions, and more specifically its effect on the child’s development, has been documented the most (see Part III). There are proportionately very few studies in which the parent’s emotion regulation is studied for its own sake, without the objective of understanding its effects on the child’s development. In other words, researchers are interested in parents because they influence child development, not because the emotion regulation of the parent as a person is of interest in itself or because there is a concern to increase parental well-being and mental health (see Chapters 6 and 11).

It follows from this that parent-driven effects are much more widely considered than child-driven effects. Yet, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions and the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions occur in a dyadic context of mutual adaptation, based on reciprocal and transactional effects (see Chapters 9 and 11). Despite the bidirectional nature of emotion regulation in parenting, the vast majority of studies document how the parent’s emotion regulation influences the child’s emotion regulation. Few focus on how the child’s emotion regulation influences the parent’s emotion regulation. Most of these studies are based on correlational analyses that provide no indication of the direction of the effects, but their results are repeatedly interpreted in the direction of parent to child and rarely in the opposite direction. The child’s evocative effect, however, may be a key factor in explaining both interindividual (i.e. from one parent to another) and intraindividual (i.e. from moment to moment or from one context to another) variation in emotion regulation and parenting.

Another challenge stemming from the predominance of correlational studies is the urgent need to go beyond a linear and homogeneous view of the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development (see Chapter 1). According to this view, the better parents regulate their own emotions, the better they regulate their emotions in the specific context of parenting; the better parents regulate their emotions in the specific context of parenting, the better they regulate the child’s emotions; and the better parents regulate the child’s emotions, the more optimally the child develops (e.g. fewer behavioral symptoms and better peer relationships), and the better the child regulates their own emotions.

This linear and homogeneous view of the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development may be overly simple. In this book, the authors have drawn attention to the fact that (1) the size of the correlations between these variables is only small to modest at best (see Chapters 1 and 9); (2) the correlations were mostly obtained in samples of normative nuclear families from WEIRD (i.e. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries (see Chapters 1 and 10); (3) there are shared third factors such as genetic factors or extrafamilial factors like shared ethnicity (see Chapter 10) explaining both the parent’s and the child’s emotion regulation (see Chapter 6); and (4) the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development are not limited to bivariate relationships but involve processes of mediation (see Chapters 1 and 6) and moderation by the child’s age, temperament, and behavior (see Chapter 1), and the parent’s gender (see Chapter 5) and culture (see Chapters 3, 9, and 10).

Beyond being overly simple, a linear and homogeneous view of relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development reinforces the belief in parental determinism, that is, the belief that child development in general, and child emotion regulation in particular, are largely or exclusively the result of parenting. Although the influence of parenting on child development is not negligible, it is clear that child development is the result of a complex equation which, in addition to parental factors, includes factors beyond the control of the parent (e.g. the child’s own agency, genetic, physiological and contextual factors). The belief in parental determinism is all the more problematic as it seems to contribute to increasing the cultural pressure to be a good parent (see Chapter 10), parental stress, and burnout (see Chapters 6 and 13). And, ironically, by increasing parental stress and burnout, it also potentially increases the risk of parental neglect and violence (see Chapters 5 and 6).

Another oversimplification is the binary vision according to which there are “good” and “bad” strategies in emotion regulation, “good” and “bad” practices in parenting, and children with “good” and “bad” development. Despite the authors’ desire to use less prescriptive terms, our book exemplifies this simplifying binary vision: functional, adaptive, well-suited, better, correct, right, sensitive, optimal, supportive, against dysfunctional, maladaptive, ill-suited, negative, at risk, nonoptimal, and unsupportive. This is entirely understandable. However, the reality is much more complex. As we saw for example in Chapter 3, so-called positive emotions do not always have positive consequences, and negative emotions should not always be minimized. We saw in Chapter 6 that the best is sometimes the enemy of the good, because too much parental emotion regulation increases stress and burnout. And we know that in the context of moderations, the effect of a variable (e.g. parental emotion regulation) on another variable (e.g. child emotion regulation) is not true for all parents, for all children, and/or in all contexts (see Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, and 10).

The result of all this is the risk of delivering unhelpful take-home messages to researchers, professionals, and parents themselves. One example of such a take-home message is the promotion of emotion regulation in general and of this or that specific strategy (for instance, always encouraging reappraisal and always discouraging suppression) to ensure optimal child development. However, it has been shown in other domains that it is flexibility in the use of emotion regulation strategies that seems to be most predictive of good outcomes (Aldao et al., Reference Aldao, Sheppes and Gross2015; Bonanno & Burton, Reference Bonanno and Burton2013; Bonanno et al., Reference Bonanno, Papa, Lalande, Westphal and Coifman2004). Another example of a potentially unhelpful take-home message is the requirement that parents achieve the desired affective state that corresponds to the model of good parenting relevant in the WEIRD countries (see Chapters 10 and 13).

Yet another challenge pertains to the need for a common language. Authors frequently use different terms to talk about the same things. In particular, we noted the following equivalences or proxies: (1) self-focused and intrinsic versus other-focused and extrinsic emotion regulation (see Chapters 2 and 6); (2) parent’s parenting of children’s emotions, children’s emotional socialization (practices), and parental socialization of child emotions (see Chapters 1, 2, and 9); (3) supportive socialization practices and emotion coaching (see Chapter 9); (4) supportive practices, coaching practices, and adaptive parental extrinsic emotion regulation versus unsupportive, dismissing practices, and maladaptive parental extrinsic emotion regulation (see Chapter 6); (5) “coregulation of and then by child’s emotion” and extrinsic emotion regulation (see Chapter 7); and (6) top-down emotion regulation and emotional labor (see Chapters 12 and 13). A dialogue between experts would undoubtedly contribute to greater conceptual clarity. Such a dialogue would make it possible to know whether the proxies are really synonyms, in which case a common language should be favored, or whether these proxies do not refer to exactly the same thing, in which case their specificity and the limits of their overlap should be more explicitly fixed.

C.3 Future Directions

In addition to these challenges, each of the contributors of this book identified in the conclusions of their chapters one or more directions for future research. We summarize and organize these future directions next, distinguishing content from methods.

C.4 Concluding Comment

Much important work has been done at the intersection of emotion regulation and parenting. However, it is clear that there is still much to do and to discover. It is our hope that this book will stimulate research in this area, benefiting both parents and children.